Paris is preparing to hold a conference for supporting the Lebanese Army in late February and another conference will be held in Rome in early March for the same purpose, al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Monday.

A missile attack by Yemen's Houthi rebels damaged a Belize-flagged Lebanese-operated cargo ship traveling through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait connecting the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, forcing the crew to abandon the ship, authorities said Monday.

The Iran-backed Houthis also claimed they shot down an American MQ-9 Reaper drone, something not immediately acknowledged by U.S. forces in the region. However, the Houthis have downed U.S. drones before.

Israeli warplanes on Sunday carried out a strike on the Abou al-Laban neighborhood in the southern border town of Aita al-Shaab, the National News Agency said.

A Lebanese judge has charged four Nissan employees with the theft of documents and devices from the Beirut home and office of the company's former boss Carlos Ghosn, a judicial source said Saturday.

A lawyer for the company told AFP the legal action was "unlawful" and that the company would seek to have the charges thrown out.

U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein has said that the US is working in a quiet manner to figure out how to end the cross-border conflict between Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Israel, which has seen the most intense escalation of fighting between the two in nearly two decades.

Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Friday vowed that Israel will “pay in blood” for the killing of civilians in south Lebanon, as he responded to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s threats to strike deep in Lebanon.

“The enemy will pay in blood for the killing of our women and children in Nabatiyeh, Sawwaneh and elsewhere,” Nasrallah said in a televised speech marking Hezbollah’s ‘Martyr Leaders Day’.

Israel's foreign minister Israel Katz called on the world Friday to pressure on Hezbollah to withdraw from South Lebanon.

"The world must pressure Iran and Hezbollah to withdraw from South Lebanon and implement U.N. resolution 1701," Katz said at a Security Conference in Munich.

On a clear day, the view south from Safed, high in the mountains of northern Israel, stretches uninterrupted across orange groves and orchards to the Sea of Galilee.

But all eyes in the historic city have been trained more recently on the jagged hills just a few kilometers away to the north -- and the border with Lebanon.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Friday reiterated that Lebanon “will remain committed to all U.N. resolutions,” stressing that Israel should “implement these resolutions, halt its aggression against the South and violations of Lebanese sovereignty, and withdraw from all occupied Lebanese territories.”

A poll published by right-wing Israeli newspaper Maariv has showed that 71% of Israelis believe that Israel should launch a large-scale military operation against Lebanon.