Fearing visa hassles could cost him his job in Dubai while an economic collapse had dashed any homecoming options, Lebanese executive Jad splurged around $135,000 on a new citizenship for himself and his wife.

Within a month of making the payment last year, the 43-year-old businessman received a small package in his mailbox.

Inside were two navy blue passports from the Caribbean island nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis -- his ticket to visa-free access to more than 150 countries, including in Europe.

Awatef Massud is longing to reunite with her Iraqi family after years spent in Syria, but first she must do time in a vetting camp to ensure she has no links to jihadists.

The 35-year-old mother of five fled to neighbouring Syria in 2014 to escape violence at home after the Islamic State group swept across swathes of Syria and Iraq.

For four months now, since her return to Iraq, she has been living in the Jadaa camp, a compound near the northern city of Mosul presented by the authorities as a "rehabilitation" centre for those coming back from Syria.

Lebanon's hijacked sovereignty must be restored after an election denied the powerful Shiite movement Hezbollah a parliamentary majority, said Christian leader Samir Geagea.

"All strategic decision-making should return to the Lebanese state... and security and military matters should be handled exclusively by the Lebanese army," the head of the Lebanese Forces party told AFP.

"No one... should be able to transport missiles from one place to another without the permission and knowledge of the military," the 69-year-old added, referring to Hezbollah.

Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian teenage militant when clashes broke out during a Saturday raid in the flashpoint Jenin area of the occupied West Bank, Palestinian sources and the army said.

"A 17-year-old boy was killed... by the Israeli occupation's bullets during its aggression on Jenin," the Palestinian health ministry said in a statement after the latest deadly violence.

It added that an 18-year-old was critically wounded. The official Palestinian news agency Wafa identified the dead teenager as Amjad al-Fayed.

More than 50 US lawmakers on Friday called on the FBI to investigate the killing in the West Bank of Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, despite Israeli promises of a probe.

The 57 House members, largely left-leaning Democrats and led by Representative Andre Carson, noted that Abu Akleh held US citizenship and pointed to divergent accounts on how she died on May 11.

The cabinet of bankrupt Lebanon, at its final session on Friday, passed a financial recovery plan needed to secure international aid, but its implementation will depend on the fractious incoming parliament.

The session came five days after Lebanon held its first election since an economic crisis, widely blamed on corruption and negligence by the ruling elite, dragged the country to the brink of becoming a failed state.

Iraq's Lake Hamrin, a once-vast reservoir northeast of Baghdad that is the sole source of water for irrigation across Diyala province, has nearly dried out, a senior official said Friday.

Successive years of low rainfall and a sharp reduction in the flow of water down the Sirwan River from neighbouring Iran have reduced much of the lake to a dust bowl, the official told AFP.

Syrian authorities on Friday rejected plans by Turkey to return one million Syrian refugees to a "safe zone" on the border, state media reported.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in early May said Ankara was aiming to encourage one million Syrian refugees to return to their country by building them housing and local infrastructure there.

Turkey is today home to more than 3.6 million Syrian refugees, who fled after a civil war broke out in 2011 in Turkey's southern neighbour.

An Israeli city is testing whether an artificial intelligence programme that detects drowning threats can help save lives off its beaches.

The programme, developed by a company called SightBit, uses information collected from surveillance cameras to determine who is in the water -- an adult or child, for example -- if they are moving or limp, and the current's movement at that location.

If a threat is determined, the programme sends an alert to a tablet held by the user -- a lifeguard, in this case -- with urgent instructions to act.

Iraq's renowned communist poet Muzaffar al-Nawab, who faced jail time and exile in the 1960s, died Friday in an Emirati hospital aged 88, Iraqi authorities announced.

The culture ministry said he died after a long battle against illness, without giving details.

"He lives on in the spirit of all those who sing his immortal poems," President Barham Saleh tweeted.

Born in 1934 into a prominent Baghdad family, Nawab was renowned for his poems filled with revolutionary fervour, a commitment to the communist cause and criticism of Arab dictatorships.