Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri has said that the chances of reaching a ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel are now above 50 percent, noting that U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein has obtained a green light from U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to press on with the negotiations.

Three Israeli airstrikes hit the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut on Saturday morning, shortly after the Israeli army issued a new call to evacuate the area.

Since Tuesday, Israel has carried out several strikes on the city's southern suburbs, a stronghold of Hezbollah.

Suzanne Karkaba and her father Ali were both civil defense rescuers whose job was to save the injured and recover the dead in Lebanon's war.

An Israeli airstrike killed five members of the same family in a home in Ain Qana in the southern province of Nabatieh, Lebanon’s state media said. The report said a mother, father and their three children were killed but didn't provide their ages.

Three other Israeli strikes killed six people and wounded 32 in different parts of Tyre province on Friday, also in south Lebanon, the report said.

The U.S. ceasefire paper presented to Speaker Nabih Berri consists of 13 points, the most controversial of which is one granting both sides "the right to self-defense," which Lebanon fears could stand for the "freedom of movement" that Israel has demanded and Lebanon has rejected, diplomatic sources in Beirut told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper on Friday.

When Sara first arrived at her rescuers' home, she was sick, tired, and was covered in ringworms and signs of abuse all over her little furry body.

After spending two months in a small Beirut apartment with an animal rights group, the four-and-half-month-old lion cub arrived Friday at a wildlife sanctuary in South Africa after a long journey on a yacht and planes, escaping both Israeli airstrikes and abusive owners.

A French court on Friday ordered the release of pro-Palestinian Lebanese militant Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, jailed for 40 years for the killing of two foreign diplomats, prosecutors said.

The court said Abdallah, first detained in 1984 and convicted in 1987 over the 1982 murders, would be released on December 6 provided he leaves France, French anti-terror prosecutors said in a statement to AFP, adding that they would appeal.

U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Lisa Johnson has informed Speaker Nabih Berri that U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein's mediation will continue, noting that the latter's efforts "enjoy the blessing of the new U.S. administration," the Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat newspaper has reported.

A top Iranian official pledged his country's unwavering support for Lebanon after talks Friday with Lebanese leaders on the ongoing war between Israel and Hezbollah, which came as the United States continued actively pushing both sides to agree to a new cease-fire deal.

Ali Larijani, an adviser to Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, said that he hoped circumstances would soon improve in Lebanon so that displaced people could return home.

"Serious discussions have resumed" between Speaker Nabih Berri and U.S. officials and there are talks regarding the proposed agreement, but things have not reached the final stages, contrary to what the Israelis are claiming, the pro-Hezbollah Al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Friday, quoting informed sources.

"The pending points are related to the formation of an international committee comprising the U.S., the UK, France and a fourth country that might be Jordan in order to monitor the implementation of Resolution 1701 with all its stipulations," the sources added.