Israel carried out air strikes in Syria near the government-held city of Homs, Syrian state media reported on Sunday, and the Israeli army later said it had responded to rocket fire.

During more than a decade of war in Syria, Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes on Syrian territory, primarily targeting Iran-backed forces and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters as well as Syrian army positions.

France has charged a former assistant of Riad Salameh, the governor of Lebanon's central bank and a subject of judicial probes at home and abroad, with money laundering.

Without reforms, Lebanon will continue to see triple-digit inflation, and public debt in the small, crisis-ridden country could reach nearly 550% of GDP by 2027, the International Monetary Fund warned in a report.

The report came as a follow-up to a nine-day visit by IMF officials in March.

The Foreign Ministry condemned Thursday as "violent" and "provocative" the burning of a copy of the Koran by an Iraqi living in Sweden during a protest authorized by the police.

Under a heavy police presence, Salwan Momika, a 37-year-old who fled to Sweden several years ago, on Wednesday stomped on the Koran before setting several pages alight in front of Stockholm's largest mosque.

The Israeli government said that it seized millions of dollars in cryptocurrency from accounts that had sent or received funds in alleged financing schemes for a powerful arm of the Iranian military and the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said he issued an order to seize the cryptocurrency wallets and turn over the funds to the Israeli government.

The Finance Ministry on Tuesday denied accusations that it has “hidden” a report submitted by the Alvarez & Marsal international auditing firm.

Caretaker Minister of the Displaced Issam Sharafeddine has expressed optimism on the possibility of launching practical steps for the repatriation of Syrian refugees to their country, following a visit that he made to Damascus in the weekend at the request of caretaker PM Najib Mikati.

The Internal Security Forces on Tuesday announced thwarting an attempt to smuggle around 450,000 captagon pills from Beirut’s port to Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Free Patriotic Movement on Tuesday denied that its chief Jebran Bassil has requested meetings with Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“Some media outlets are continuing to publish totally baseless reports aimed at distorting the image of the FPM and its chief Jebran Bassil, including what a newspaper mentioned about the FPM leader requesting a meeting that was rejected by Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad,” the FPM said in a statement.

French special envoy Jean-Yves Le Drian will meet with presidential candidate Jihad Azour in Paris in the coming days, a local media report said.

Le Drian had arrived last week in Beirut to end a political impasse that has left the country without a president for more than seven months. He met with officials, party heads and other politicians.