Prime Minister Tammam Salam has rejected claims that he is suppressing some parties in the government, warning them not to challenge him.

“I am practicing my constitutional authorities and neither challenging nor quelling anyone,” Salam told al-Liwaa daily published on Friday.

A senior Islamic State leader who coordinated suicide bombings and recruited funds and fighters for the jihadists has been killed in a coalition air strike in Syria, the Pentagon said Thursday.  

Tariq bin Tahar al-Awni al-Harzi was killed in the northern city of Shaddadi on June 16, Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis said in a statement. 

Islamic State group jihadists have destroyed a famous statue of a lion outside the museum in the Syrian city of Palmyra, the country's antiquities director said Thursday.

Maamoun Abdelkarim said the statue, known as the Lion of Al-Lat, was an irreplaceable piece and was apparently destroyed last week.

British police on Thursday charged a 26-year-old woman with inciting terror through Twitter and membership of the Islamic State group, and arrested a 15-year-old girl on suspicion of preparing an attack.

Police were also continuing an investigation into the disappearance of a family of 12, including three generations, believed to have traveled to Syria.

A growing number of Syrian refugee children are being pushed into the labor market to support their families and exploited, often in dangerous conditions, said a report released on Thursday.

Syria's civil war has killed more than 230,000 people and forced around half the population from their homes.

With the Syrian army's ranks depleted by casualties and rampant draft-dodging, a new campaign in the war-torn country is urging citizens to enlist.

In recent weeks, billboards have sprung up across Damascus reading "Join the army," "We are all the army," and "With our army, we'll win our country."

Four hospitals in the southern Syrian province of Daraa have been forced to close in recent days after intensive government air strikes, a monitor said on Thursday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 18 people were killed in government strikes across Daraa on Wednesday, including in a raid that hit a rebel checkpoint near a field hospital in the town of Saida.

The number of Syrian children being forced to work is increasing with those as young as six reportedly working in some parts of Lebanon, the U.N. children's agency and Save the Children warned on Thursday.

One 13-year-old Syrian refugee, who harvests potatoes in Lebanon, reported having to carry a bag weighing more than 10 kilograms when full and getting beaten with a plastic hose if he left any potato behind, said UNICEF and Save the Children.

Hizbullah is getting ready for a battle in the Syrian border town of Zabadani after entering the second stage of its offensive against jihadists, sources said.

The sources told As Safir daily published on Thursday that Hizbullah's priority currently lies in clearing Zabadani of militants.

The World Food Program said Wednesday it had to cut food aid for Syrian refugees in Lebanon in half because of a funding crisis and may soon have to halt all food support for most refugees in Jordan.

Lebanon and Jordan are among five countries that host some 4 million Syrian war refugees. The U.N. refugee agency warned last week that with the Syria conflict in its fifth year, funding levels for refugee aid programs dropped to a dangerous low in 2015.