The most powerful earthquake in nearly a century struck Turkey and Syria early Monday, killing over 1,200 people in their sleep, leveling buildings and causing tremors felt as far away as Iraq.

The 7.8-magnitude quake wiped out entire sections of major Turkish cities in a restless region filled with millions of people who have fled the civil war in Syria and other conflicts.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Sunday accused the country’s lawmakers of “high treason” for failing to elect a new president.

Security forces have arrested a number of notorious money changers who are accused of currency speculation operations in a wave of raids across Lebanon.

The head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, MP Mohammed Raad, on Saturday warned that his party’s “enemies” are “trying to turn the presidential juncture in Lebanon into a platform for taking hold of a president who would implement their policies and continue their scheme of tightening the noose on the Resistance.”

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea on Saturday stressed “the need for everyone to commit to finalizing the presidential juncture, instead of obstructing it with the aim of imposing a candidate wanted by the obstructing party.”

Most wealthy Gulf Arab nations followed Saudi Arabia's lead in recent years and ostracized crisis-hit Lebanon because of the growing influence of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah. The exception was Qatar.

Doha has been silently expanding its influence in Lebanon. It continued receiving Lebanese leaders and pumped tens millions of dollars into helping the country's armed forces amid a historic economic meltdown.

The French diplomat charged with coordinating international support for Lebanon, so it can receive International Monetary Fund aid, has criticized the slow pace of reforms in the crisis-hit country.

The widow of Lebanese intellectual Lokman Slim has called for a U.N. fact-finding mission to determine whether his assassination and two other murders are linked to the Beirut port explosion.

The latest meeting between ex-president Michel Aoun and a Hezbollah delegation was “cordial” but the former president voiced major dismay at Hezbollah during it, sources that took part in the meeting said.

Aoun demonstrated the six years that he spent as president and lamented that his tenure “was met with nothing but obstruction,” the sources told ad-Diyar newspaper in remarks published Friday.

Deputy Speaker Elias Bou Saab has met with White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan in Washington at the White House, media reports said Friday.

National Security Council coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa Brett McGurk also attended the meeting. So did Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs Amos Hochstein, Retired Lieutenant General Terry Wolff, and Senior Advisor to the U.S. lead negotiator for the Israel-Lebanon border negotiations Nadine Zaatar.