Investigators working in four countries have amassed new evidence linking attempts to assassinate officials and businessmen to either Hizbullah or Iran-based operatives, The Washington Post reported Monday.

Citing unnamed U.S. and Middle Eastern security officials, the newspaper said the evidence included phone records, forensic tests, coordinated travel arrangements and even cellphone SIM cards purchased in Iran and used by several of the would-be assailants.

Speaker Nabih Berri sought on Monday to appease the angry families of Lebanese pilgrims kidnapped in Syria, saying sources from the Syrian opposition and Turkish officials have confirmed that they are still alive.

In remarks to several Beirut dailies, Berri said reports and “rumors” that the 11 men, who were kidnapped in the northern province of Aleppo last week, were executed are baseless.

Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri proposed to pay a ransom to the abductors of the 11 Lebanese pilgrims in exchange for their release, al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Monday.

The daily said that Hariri’s proposal facilitated negotiations with the kidnappers.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday voiced "revulsion" over the bloodshed in Syria, while accusing Iran and its ally Hizbullah of being accomplices.

He was "revolted was by the incessant massacres conducted by Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces against ... civilians ... which continued over the weekend in the town of Houla," the premier's office said.

The Syrian army on Sunday opened fire on three Lebanese nationals on the outskirts of the Rashaya town of Kfarqouq on the Lebanese-Syrian border, killing a man and wounding and arresting another, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported.

Citing reports, NNA said the three were trying to smuggle cigarette packets into Syria when they fell into an “advanced ambush” by the Syrian forces on the international border in an area northeast of Kfarqouq.

An Iraqi plane landed Sunday at the Beirut Rafik Hariri International Airport carrying Lebanese Shiite pilgrims who had survived a roadside bombing against their bus in Iraq.

The survivors include nine who were wounded in the attack, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported.

A man called Charbel Rahme, who hails from the northern town of Bcharri, was killed on Sunday by troops’ gunfire when his vehicle failed to stop at an army checkpoint at al-Madfoun Bridge in the North, state-run National News Agency reported.

Rahme, 38, died immediately as a gunshot struck his head, NNA said.

U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Derek Plumbly stressed on Sunday the importance of having the issue of “illegal arms” on the agenda of the National Dialogue that President Michel Suleiman has called for.

In an interview with Voice of Lebanon radio (100.5), Plumbly said the illegal weapons create alarm.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi expressed hope on Sunday that a National Dialogue that President Michel Suleiman had called for would succeed.

Al-Rahi also hoped in his sermon that the all-party talks would lead to the adoption of a new national pact that would create a “Lebanese Spring.”

Several parts of a residential building collapsed in the town of Sarba north of Beirut overnight, injuring one person, media reports said Sunday.

Two floors of the building, which lies on the main road, were damaged in the collapse, they said.