The weakening of Hezbollah in last year's war with Israel allowed Lebanon's long deadlocked parliament to reach consensus around a president who has the confidence of the international community.

Army chief Joseph Aoun, who was elected on Thursday ending a more than two-year vacancy, signalled a readjustment of Lebanon's foreign policy as the country works with international creditors to forge a way out of six years of deepening financial crisis.

Her family had lost hope she would ever return after Islamic State fighters took her and thousands of other Yazidi women and girls as sex slaves from Iraq into Syria during their reign of terror.

A decade later, 27-year-old Silvana Khider walked for days across Syria as president Bashar al-Assad's rule came to an end, and was reunited with her sister in Iraq.

While she was taken by IS, she spent the last years of her ordeal in Syria's Idlib province, bastion of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group that spearheaded Assad's fall on December 8.

Turkey's top diplomat on Friday ruled out a role for French troops in Syria, saying it was only negotiating with the United States which has sought to head off Turkish military action against Kurdish fighters there.

Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan accused Paris of turning a blind eye to Turkey's security concerns, and called on France to take back French jihadist militants jailed in Syria.

Iranian state TV on Friday showed the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps touring an underground missile base used in an attack against Israel, hours after fighters marched through Tehran.

The footage of the missile base at an undisclosed location "in the mountains" and the parade by paramilitary Basij volunteers come after the weakening of Iran's allies Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, during wars with Israel.

Syria's new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa told visiting Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani on Friday that he was ready to stem "illegal immigration" to Europe, the European diplomat said.

"Sharaa says he is ready to block illegal immigration, (and) fight against drug traffickers... two crucial commitments for Italy," Tajani said in the Lebanese capital, after visiting neighbouring Syria earlier in the day.

"I don't want the Mediterranean to remain a migrant cemetery. We want it to be a sea of growth or trade," he added.

Iran's once-youthful population is aging fast, fuelling economic fears as cash-strapped couples resist a government push for more children.

Driven by rising life expectancy and dramatically declining birth rates, Iran's demographic makeup has shifted over the years, mirroring trends across much of the world.

Research published in The Lancet medical journal on Friday estimates that the death toll in Gaza during the first nine months of the Israel-Hamas war was around 40 percent higher than recorded by the Palestinian territory's health ministry.

The number of dead in Gaza has become a matter of bitter debate since Israel launched its military campaign against Hamas in response to the Palestinian militant group's unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack.

Up to June 30 last year, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza reported a death toll of 37,877 in the war.

Mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States have launched a new push to end the Gaza war and secure the release of dozens of hostages held in the Palestinian territory.

Indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas have resumed in Doha and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said this week that a deal is "very close".

However, the details of the progress remain unclear, with numerous obstacles still to overcome, analysts say.

- Where do things stand? -

French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday welcomed the "crucial election" by Lebanese lawmakers of army chief Joseph Aoun as president and said he would soon visit the country.

Macron spoke with the general hours after Aoun was announced as the leader to end a two-year vacuum in the country's top post.

France "will continue to be at the side of Lebanon and its people," Macron told Aoun in a telephone call, the French presidency said in a statement. Macron said he would go to Lebanon "very soon".

Poland's government said Thursday it would grant free access to Israeli officials wanting to attend the 80th anniversary of the Auschwitz-Birkenau liberation despite an arrest warrant for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued the warrant in November over the Gaza war, prompting outrage from Israel and its allies.

Poland, as a party to the ICC, would be required to arrest Netanyahu if he attended this month's ceremony marking 80 years since the Red Army liberated the Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.