France said Tuesday it would move quickly to answer a call from Lebanon for faster arms deliveries as it battles Islamist militants on the Syrian border.

"France is fully committed to supporting the Lebanese army, a pillar of stability and unity in Lebanon," deputy foreign ministry spokesman Vincent Floreani said.

Fierce fighting raged for the third day in the mountains around the northeastern border town of Arsal on Monday as the army announced 14 soldiers have been killed in the battles and as efforts to reach a ceasefire were underway.

A military source told LBCI television: “We have allowed a temporary ceasefire so that a Muslim Scholars Committee delegation can enter Arsal and return with the hostage soldiers, which is the first condition for continuing the implementation of the agreement's remaining points.”

Lebanese security forces have arrested a woman in the northern city of Tripoli after discovering an explosive belt and drugs in her home, a security source told Agence France-Presse on Friday.

The Lebanese woman, who was not named, is in her thirties and married to a Syrian who is currently in prison in Lebanon for firing at soldiers, the source said.

Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah pledged on Friday to do everything his party perceives as a “duty” to help the Palestinian resistance in the face of Israeli atrocities, considering also that fighters in Gaza have emerged victorious from the ongoing war.

“We tell our brothers in Gaza we are with you and beside you and we will do anything that we perceive is a duty in all fields,” Nasrallah said in a speech he gave at the annual celebration of Quds Day at the Sayyed al-Shuhada complex in Beirut's southern suburbs.

An Australian woman of Lebanese origin was barred from leaving Lebanon after her ex-husband's family filed a complaint against her claiming she has been visiting her “boyfriend” in the northern city of Tripoli since arriving in the country on June 20.

Mahassen Issa, 29 and mother of two minors, was supposed to return to Australia last week. But right before her departure, she was contacted by Lebanese authorities informing her that she has been charged with adultery, British newspaper The Guardian reported.

Several Lebanese nationals were onboard an Algerian plane that went missing Thursday during a flight from Burkina Faso to Algiers.

An official source in Lebanon told Agence France-Presse that at least 20 Lebanese nationals were on the flight, including three couples with 10 children.

At least 687 Palestinians have been killed as Israel continued bombarding Gaza for the sixteenth day in a row, while fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants was briefly suspended Wednesday in several flashpoint areas of the Strip to allow convoys of ambulances to retrieve the wounded.

Amid the ongoing violence, Hamas rejected a ceasefire to end 16 days of deadly fighting unless the blockade on the Gaza Strip is lifted, its chief Khaled Meshaal said in Doha.

The emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, arrived unexpectedly in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for talks on regional issues with King Abdullah, Al-Arabiya television said.

The Saudi-owned news channel said the Qatari leader was in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, "to discuss developments in the region".

World efforts to broker a ceasefire in war-torn Gaza gathered pace Monday as Israel pressed a blistering 14-day assault on the enclave, pushing the Palestinian death toll to 572.

As Washington and the United Nations demanded an "immediate ceasefire" in the battered Palestinian enclave, Israel announced that seven more of its soldiers had been killed during fighting in Gaza, raising the overall Israeli death toll to 27, all but two of them soldiers.

The Gaza death toll hit 342 on Saturday as Israeli warplanes intensified their bombardment and troops pressed a ground assault on the 12th day of a major confrontation with Hamas.

The latest incident in Gaza saw one man killed in an air strike on the northern town of Jabaliya shortly after two were killed in a strike near Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said.