ISTANBUL (Reuters) -Turkey's foreign and defence ministers and intelligence chief plan to travel to Pakistan this week to discuss its stop-start talks with Afghanistan over a ceasefire in place in South Asia, President Tayyip Erdogan said.

According to an official readout on Sunday of his comments on a return flight from Baku, where he met Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Erdogan said the tripartite visit aim to seal a permanent ceasefire and peace between the nations as soon as possible.

By Jonathan Spicer

ISTANBUL (Reuters) -The United States seeks to take advantage of a "moment" in Lebanon in which it can cut Iranian funding to Hezbollah and press the group to disarm, the U.S. Treasury Department's top sanctions official said.

In a late Friday interview, John Hurley, the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said Iran has managed to funnel about $1 billion to Hezbollah this year despite a raft of Western sanctions that have battered its economy.

By Samia Nakhoul

DUBAI (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump has been talking up the prospects of Saudi Arabia agreeing to normalise ties with Israel, but it is unlikely to happen when Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visits the White House this month.

The establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia after decades of enmity could shake up the political and security landscape in the Middle East, potentially strengthening U.S. influence in the region.

Syria is joining the global coalition against the Islamic State group, a US official said Monday hours after President Donald Trump welcomed his Syrian counterpart Ahmed al-Sharaa for historic White House talks.

Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad late last year, was the first Syrian leader to visit the White House since the Middle Eastern country's independence in 1946.

Syria's President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the United States on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country's state news agency reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist.

Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday.

It's the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country's independence in 1946, according to analysts.

(Reuters) -Syria has carried out nationwide pre-emptive operations targeting Islamic State cells, a spokesperson for the Interior Ministry said on Saturday.

Syrian security forces carried out 61 raids, with 71 people arrested and explosives and weapons seized, the spokesperson told state-run Al Ekhbariya TV.

The raids come ahead of a trip by Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa to Washington to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump and join an anti Islamic State U.S.-led coalition.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israeli settlers attacked a group of Palestinian villagers, activists and journalists on Saturday who had gathered during an attempt to harvest olives near a settler outpost in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, witnesses said.

Two Reuters employees - a journalist and a security adviser accompanying her - were among those injured in the attack by the men who wielded sticks and clubs and hurled large rocks, in an area close to the Palestinian village of Beita.

Israel identified on Saturday the latest hostage remains sent back from Gaza by Palestinian militants, leaving only five more bodies to be returned under the US-brokered truce that halted the two-year war.

The Israeli military identified the body handed over on Friday as that of volunteer ambulance driver Lior Rudaeff, who was killed in the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack that triggered the Gaza war.

By Emily Rose

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -U.S. forces are taking part in overseeing and coordinating aid transfer into the Gaza Strip together with Israel as part of U.S. President Donald Trump's ceasefire plan, an Israeli security official said on Saturday.

The Washington Post on Friday reported that the U.S.-led Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) will replace Israel in overseeing aid into Gaza. It cited a U.S. official and people familiar with the matter as saying Israel was part of the process but that CMCC would decide what aid enters Gaza and how.

By Laila Bassam and Tom Perry

NAWA, Syria (Reuters) -As sectarian violence swept through Syria's southern Sweida province in July, the Sbeih family say they were taken by Druze gunmen and held in a school with other Bedouin tribe members. When their guards disappeared after three nights, they tried to escape.

Shots were fired, and the Bedouins scattered. Faisal Sbeih and his wife, Fasl, were separated. Three family members were killed, they said, including their 20-year-old daughter, Malak.

She had been due to marry the next day.