Saudi Arabia's top cleric urged governments and fellow clerics across the Muslim world to punish Hizbullah for its intervention in the Syrian civil war against the mainly Sunni rebels fighting to oust President Bashar Assad.
Grand mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Shaikh said Hizbullah's actions vindicated the Sunni-dominated kingdom's long suspicion of the group and its alliance with Shiite Iran.

Around 10 rockets and mortar rounds from Syria slammed into the northeastern city of Baalbek on Wednesday night, injuring a Lebanese man and causing material damage, the army command said.
A military communique said Thursday that soldiers inspected the areas where the rockets had fallen and carried out patrols.

Syria's rebels conceded on Tuesday they had lost the battle for the strategic town of Qusayr but vowed to fight “thousands of Lebanese mercenaries” after the army seized total control of it and the surrounding region.
The main opposition National Coalition shrugged off the defeat, declaring the "revolution will continue".

The army vowed on Wednesday to trounce rebel fighters across Syria hours after recapturing Qusayr following a more than two-week assault on the strategic town on the border with Lebanon.
"After successive advances in the war against organised terrorists, our armed forces say they will not hesitate to crush the armed men wherever they are and in every corner of Syria," it said in a statement.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun on Tuesday said the Constitutional Council “cannot but accept” the challenges filed against the extension of parliament's term, calling for the replacement of security officials over the dire security situation in Tripoli.
“We extensively discussed the challenge we have filed and the possible effects should it be accepted. We agreed that as is the case with any vacant seat, elections would have to take place within 60 days and the parliament would be dissolved,” Aoun said after the weekly meeting of the Change and Reform parliamentary bloc in Rabiyeh.

Caretaker leader of the Syrian National Coalition George Sabra on Tuesday urged Speaker Nabih Berri to open “humanitarian corridors” to evacuate the wounded in the neighboring country's border town of a-Qusayr.
"There are more than 1000 wounded persons in al-Qusayr, 400 of them are in critical conditions, and we do not have enough support in the town to heal these people,” Sabra explained in a videotaped speech posted online.

At least one Hizbullah member was killed overnight in clashes with Syrian rebels on the Syrian side of the border with Lebanon, a security source told Agence France Presse on Sunday.
"Clashes took place between a group of FSA (Free Syrian Army) and a group of Hizbullah members coming from Baalbek in a border area between the outskirts of Baalbek and Damascus province in Syria," the source said.

Information Minister Omran al-Zohbi accused Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Syria's former ally Turkey on Saturday of "terrorizing" his own people and called on him to resign.
"The demands of the Turkish people do not justify this violence, and if Erdogan is incapable of using non-violent methods, then he should quit," state television cited Zohbi as saying after rioting in Istanbul.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun said on Friday that his political rivals “realized they will not win the polls even if the 1960's electoral law was adopted,” announcing also that he has prepared “a thorough file” to challenge the extension of the parliament's mandate.
"They do not want to hold the elections maybe because even the 1960's electoral law does not secure their victory,” Aoun stated after an exceptional meeting of the Change and Reform bloc at his residence in al-Metn's Rabieh neighborhood.

Syrian President Bashar Assad said on Thursday that he would run in the 2014 presidential poll if that is the desire of the Syrian people, noting that Hizbullah is only fighting in the town of Qusayr, not entire Syria.
"The main battle is in Damascus and Aleppo, not in Qusayr, and Hizbullah has a limited number of fighters, even if they numbered 2,000, but we're speaking of a war involving thousands of fighters," Assad said in an interview with al-Manar television.
