By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON, March 4 (Reuters) - Lawmakers in the U.S. Senate were set to begin voting on Wednesday on a bipartisan war powers resolution aiming to stop the military campaign against Iran and require that any hostilities against it be authorized by Congress.

The latest effort by Democrats and a few Republicans to rein in President Donald Trump's repeated troop deployments, sponsors describe it as a bid to take back Congress' responsibility to declare war, as spelled out in the U.S. Constitution.

March 4 (Reuters) - A submarine attack on an Iranian ship off the coast of Sri Lanka has left at least 101 people missing, one dead and 78 injured, sources in Sri Lanka's navy and defence ministry told Reuters on Wednesday.

It was unclear who attacked the ship, which the sources said has now sunk.

A Sri Lankan navy spokesman said the report of 101 people being missing was not true, and that 32 people injured in the incident had been rescued by Sri Lankan navy and were under treatment in hospital.

COLOMBO, March 4 (Reuters) - At least 101 people were missing and 78 wounded after a submarine attack on an Iranian ship off Sri Lanka's coast, sources in Sri Lanka's navy and defence ministry told Reuters on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Uditha Jayasinghe, writing by Shilpa Jamkhandikar, Editing by Andrew Heavens)

By Eduardo Baptista

BEIJING, March 4 (Reuters) - Weeks before U.S.–Israeli strikes in Iran, wide swathes of state-backed Chinese companies were eyeing projects in areas from energy and heavy industry to trade promotion, data showed, spotlighting the risks the war presents for business in China.

One of Iran's closest allies and the biggest buyer of its oil, China has so far kept silent about the business and trade impact of the attacks, though it condemned the U.S.-led operation as "unacceptable" and called for restraint.

NICOSIA, March 4 (Reuters) - Cyprus said asuspect object had been detected close to Lebanese airspace on Wednesday, and a government source said two Greek F-16 fighter jets had been scrambled to intercept it.

The alert was called off more than an hour later.

By Parisa Hafezi

DUBAI, March 4 (Reuters) - Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Iran's late Supreme Leader, has survived the U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran in which his father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed, two Iranian sources told Reuters on Wednesday.

Mojtaba is seen by the establishment as a possible successor to his father, the sources said.

Israel pounded Lebanon early Thursday and said it intercepted missiles from Iran as a widening war launched by the United States and Israel also brought fresh turmoil to Iraq.

An air strike in the pre-dawn hours struck a Beirut suburbs stronghold of Hezbollah, the Tehran-backed force that has vowed to avenge the death of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the war's first moments Saturday.

By Stanley Widianto

JAKARTA, March 4 (Reuters) - Indonesia's foreign minister said talks on U.S. President Donald Trump's Gaza "Board of Peace," of which the Southeast Asian nation is a key troop-contributing member, were on hold due to the Middle East war.

The U.S. and Israeli air war against Iran has killed scores of civilians, thrown global air transport into chaos and sent oil prices surging after the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

MOSCOW, March 4 (Reuters) - Russia accused the United States on Wednesday of using an imaginary threat from Iran as a pretext to overthrow its constitutional order, and said Washington's calls for Iranians to seize power from their leaders were cynical and inhumane.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the U.S. had used negotiations with Iran, which were taking place as recently as last week, as a cover to disguise a plan for regime change there.

GENEVA, March 4 (Reuters) - A committee of UN experts said on Wednesday it was "deeply disturbed" by the deaths of children amid escalating violence across the Middle East, particularly the bombing of a girls school in Iran.

The Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab in southern Iran was hit on Saturday, the first day of U.S. and Israeli attacks against the country. It killed 160 children, UN experts stated.

(Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin, editing by Kirsti Knolle)