More than a year of clashes that recently escalated into war have cost Lebanon more than $5 billion in economic losses, with actual structural damage amounting to billions more, the World Bank said on Thursday.
Since September 23, Israel has ramped up its air campaign in Lebanon, later sending in ground troops following almost a year of limited, cross-border exchanges initiated by Hezbollah over the Gaza war.
The tale of a distinctly Palestinian road trip -- through refugee camps and Israeli checkpoints -- takes centre stage in director Rashid Masharawi's latest film, which debuted at this year's Cairo International Film Festival.
"It's a search for home, a search for Palestine, for ourselves," Masharawi told AFP a day after Wednesday's world premiere of his new film "Passing Dreams".
It kicked off the Middle East's oldest film festival, which opened with a traditional dabkeh dance performance by a troupe from the war-torn Gaza Strip.
The UN peacekeeping chief whose force monitors Lebanon's south said redeploying Lebanese troops there is crucial for any solution to more than a year of Hezbollah-Israel clashes that escalated into war in September.
"The redeployment of the Lebanese armed forces is an absolutely central element to any durable settlement," Under Secretary-General for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix told reporters during a briefing in the Beirut area, at the end of a three-day visit.
A war monitor said Israeli strikes in and around Damascus on Thursday killed 20 people including Palestinian militants and Iran-backed fighters, as attacks intensify during the Lebanon war.
The attacks coincided with an official visit to Damascus by Ali Larijani, a senior adviser to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Human rights campaigners on Thursday paid tribute to an Iranian activist who killed himself hours after warning he would do so if four inmates seen to be political prisoners were not freed.
Kianoosh Sanjari, an opponent of the Islamic republic's clerical authorities, warned in a message on X late Wednesday that he would commit suicide if the release of the two men and two women did not take place.
He then took his own life, according to multiple rights campaigners and organisations.
Air strikes hit the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Thursday after an Israeli warning to evacuate parts of the Hezbollah bastion, AFPTV images showed.
A plume of grey smoke rose over the area after the latest strike since Israel sharply intensified its campaign against the Iran-backed militant group in September.
Shortly before the strike, Israel had issued a warning to residents to evacuate their homes.
Israel and France played out a goalless draw in a Nations League football match in Paris on Thursday surrounded by a huge security operation.
Around 4,000 police and members of the security forces patrolled inside and outside the Stade de France to prevent a repetition of the attacks on fans of Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv in Amsterdam last week.
A further 1,600 civilian security personnel were also on duty.
Stewards had to intervene at one point to stop fans of both nations from clashing in the stands, an AFP reporter saw.
Israel suffered one of the deadliest days of its ground offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon on Wednesday when six of its soldiers were killed in combat near the border.
The soldiers "fell during combat in southern Lebanon", the army said in a statement. Their deaths mean 47 Israeli troops have been killed in combat with Hezbollah since September 30, when Israel sent ground forces into Lebanon.
The army's announcement came after new Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said there would be no easing up in the war against Hezbollah.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told the visiting head of the UN nuclear watchdog on Thursday that his government was willing to resolve doubts about its atomic programme, ahead of US President-elect Donald Trump's arrival in office.
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi said achieving "results" in nuclear talks with Iran was vital to avoid a new conflict in the region already inflamed by Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
A CIA official has been charged in connection with a leak of classified US intelligence documents about Israel's plans for a retaliatory strike on Iran, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
Asif Rahman, who worked abroad for the Central Intelligence Agency, was arrested in Cambodia by the FBI and was to appear in a federal court in Guam on Thursday, the newspaper said.
It said Rahman, who held a top secret security clearance, was indicted in Virginia last week with two counts of willful retention and transmission of national intelligence information.
