Hezbollah's new leader Naim Qassem on Wednesday said the group would agree to a ceasefire with Israel under acceptable terms, but added that a viable deal has yet to be presented.
Qassem, who was named Hezbollah secretary-general on Tuesday, did not explicitly link a Lebanon ceasefire to an end to fighting in Gaza, a position previously held by the Iran-backed group.
Saudi Arabia's new national airline, Riyadh Air, announced on Wednesday it has ordered 60 narrow-body aircraft from Airbus, as it prepares for takeoff next year.
The carrier, created last year, has reached "an agreement to purchase 60 Airbus A321neo single-aisle aircraft in the latest step towards its maiden flight in 2025", it said in a statement.
Iranian authorities amputated fingers of two men convicted of theft, rights groups said Wednesday, in a relatively rare use of a punishment allowed under the Islamic republic's penal code but condemned as abhorrent and illegal by activists.
The two, brothers of Kurdish origin, each had four fingers on their right hands amputated by a guillotine machine at the prison in the city of Urmia in northwest Iran on Tuesday, the reports said.
They were then transferred to hospital for medical care, the reports added.
Iran's execution of a German-Iranian dissident this week is a clear message that a Western passport cannot shield critics of the Tehran government, Iranians with dual nationality say.
Jamshid Sharmahd, 69, was executed on Monday after several years behind bars, sparking condemnation from Germany and the European Union.
"It's terrifying to wake up to this kind of news. It's proof that this regime is staying in power through violence, cruelty and executions," said Sahar Aghakhani, a 30-year-old Franco-Iranian working in the health sector.
Strikes rocked the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek and its outskirts on Wednesday, an AFP correspondent reported, hours after Israel issued an evacuation call for the area.
Baalbek mayor Mustafa al-Shall confirmed strikes hit the city and its surroundings, while state media said "enemy warplanes launched a series of strikes on the Asira area of the city of Baalbek" and in a nearby town.
A Lebanese security official told AFP that an Israeli strike on a Hezbollah van carrying munitions near Beirut killed the driver on Wednesday.
"A van belonging to Hezbollah was targeted in an Israeli strike on the Kahhale road and its driver killed," the official said, adding that the vehicle was carrying munitions.
The official requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
An AFP correspondent saw a vehicle on fire and said the Kahhale road, which links Beirut to Damascus, had been blocked in both directions.
More than a year into the Gaza war, the Israeli army's reservists are exhausted and it is struggling to recruit soldiers just as it opens a new front in Lebanon.
Some 300,000 reservists have been called up since the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, according to the army, 18 percent of them men over 40 who should have been exempted.
Military service is mandatory from the age of 18 for Israeli men and women, though several exemptions apply.
Israel is waging a multi-front war against Hamas in Gaza and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The United States on Tuesday offered a $5 million reward for information about a 1994 plane bombing in Panama blamed on Lebanese militant group Hezbollah that killed 21 people.
Alas Chiricanas Flight 901 exploded midair after taking off from an airport in the Caribbean province of Colon.
All those onboard -- mostly members of the Central American nation's Jewish community -- were killed, including three Americans.
The future of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees hung in the balance Tuesday after Israel's parliament banned UNRWA from operating in Israel and occupied east Jerusalem.
The measure provoked international outrage, and was seen as a political victory for those who accused UNRWA employees of taking part in the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.
What impact will the ban have on the hundreds of thousands of recipients of UNRWA aid in the Palestinian territories, including in war-ravaged Gaza?
In a flash, Ali Kanaan lost his mother, sister-in-law, niece and two nephews when Israel pounded his home village in Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley where 60 people were killed on Monday.
The Israeli strikes on 12 areas in the impoverished eastern region where Hezbollah holds sway were the most violent there since the Israel-Hezbollah war erupted late last month.
In the village of Al-Alaq, west of Baalbek city, Israeli raids killed 16 people, including Kanaan's relatives, according to Lebanon's health ministry.
