A state prosecutor in Lebanon is expected to file kidnapping charges against an Australian woman, an Australian TV crew, and others for attempting to take the woman's two children away from her Lebanese ex-husband and bring them back to Australia.

Sally Faulkner, along with four Australians, two Britons, and two Lebanese, was brought into police custody last Thursday after a botched attempt was made to snatch Faulkner's five-year-old daughter and three-year-old son from their paternal grandmother as she took them to school in the Hadath area.

The army announced Monday that two Beirut airport workers held on suspicion of terrorism have been freed after being cleared of the charges.

“They were interrogated under the supervision of the relevant judicial authorities and eventually released after it was verified that they had no ties to any terrorist activities or groups,” the Army Command said in a statement.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted Monday for the first time that Israel has carried out strikes inside Syria to prevent Hizbullah from acquiring what he described as “game-changing” weapons.

“We are proud that in the stormy and volatile Middle East, we were able to maintain relative calm and relative safety in Israel. We act when we should act, including here, across the border, in dozens of attacks, to prevent Hizbullah from getting game-changing weaponry,” said Netanyahu during a visit to Syria's occupied Golan Heights where he observed a military drill.

The Gulf kingdom of Bahrain on Monday published a list of 68 Islamist groups it classified as "terrorist", the state news agency BNA said.

Hizbullah, already branded as "terrorist" by the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab League, topped the list approved by Bahrain's cabinet, BNA said.

Al-Mustaqbal movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri declared Monday that he would want Hizbullah's controversial arsenal of weapons to be part of any “package deal” among the rival political parties.

“When Hizbullah lost hope that (Free Patriotic Movement founder MP Michel) Aoun can become president, it started talking about the package deal,” said Hariri in a chat with reporters.

Tourism Minister Michel Pharaon stated on Monday that there is no financial scandal linked to the controversial file of the State Security Agency and slammed reports claiming that there is a kind of political “fight” over the file.

“There is no battle and no one is raising the stakes in the State Security file,” said Pharaon in a press conference.

The General Security agency was able to arrest an extremist network that recruits minors in favor of the Islamic State group and is active between the northern areas of al-Mankoubin and Wadi Nahle, al-Akhbar daily reported on Monday.

General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim has called for providing the country’s security agencies with their needs for being the reason behind the relative stability that Lebanon is enjoying.

“It is enough to carry out a quick comparison between the security situation here and in the region to find out the importance of the work carried out by the agencies,” Ibrahim told As Safir daily published on Monday.

Prime Minister Tammam Salam has expressed regret that the controversy on the State Security agency has turned into a sectarian dispute among cabinet ministers, urging Christian parties to push for the election of a new president.

Salam said in remarks published in several dailies on Monday that the article on State Security is on the agenda of a cabinet session that will be held Tuesday.

Speaker Nabih Berri expressed hope Sunday that Lebanon's long-running presidential vacuum will see an end soon, as he called for a “Saudi-Iranian” reconciliation aimed at pacifying the situation in the region.

“We in Lebanon have started to see a light at the end of the tunnel on the possibility that the Lebanese parties will be able to elect a president soon,” Berri told the 23rd conference of the Arab Inter-parliamentary Union at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo.