U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel's vital ally voices unease over air strikes on Qatar that threaten to derail already flailing attempts to reach a Gaza ceasefire.

Leaders from Arab and Muslim countries will gather in a show of unity in Doha on Monday, a week after Israel's unprecedented strike on Hamas in Qatar prompted widespread anger.

The main Israeli group campaigning for the release of hostages held in Gaza said Saturday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the chief obstacle to freeing the captives, shortly after he accused Hamas's leaders of prolonging the war.

"The targeted operation in Qatar proved beyond any doubt that there is one obstacle to returning the... hostages and ending the war: Prime Minister Netanyahu," the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement, referring to Israel's recent strike on a meeting of Hamas members in the Gulf state.

Sources close to the Iraqi government told AFP on Friday that no deal was made to secure the release of Israeli-Russian academic Elizabeth Tsurkov this week, saying her abductors had instead bowed to unspecified "pressure".

Kidnapped in Baghdad in March of 2023, Tsurkov was set free late Tuesday, hours after Israel carried out an unprecedented strike in Qatar targeting Hamas leaders. She was handed over to the U.S. embassy in Iraq, then flown the following day to Israel.

Libya's U.N.-recognized government based in Tripoli has reached a preliminary accord with a powerful armed group to end months of tensions that have flared into occasional violence, a government adviser and local media said Saturday.

Negotiations between the government and the Radaa Force were facilitated by Turkey, according to the same sources.

Top U.S. diplomat Marco Rubio began a visit to Israel on Sunday, after expressing the Trump administration's unwavering support for its ally in the war with Hamas despite a strike in Qatar that drew broad criticism of Israel.

Lebanese authorities said that one person was killed Friday in an Israeli strike on the country's south near the border, the latest deadly raid this week despite a ceasefire with Hezbollah.

"An Israeli enemy strike on the town of Aitaroun killed one person," the Health Ministry said in a statement.

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa said that Damascus is negotiating with Israel to reach a security agreement that would see Israel leave areas it occupied after the December overthrow of Bashar al-Assad.

As Islamist-led forces toppled Assad on December 8, Israel deployed troops to the U.N.-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights which has separated Israeli and Syrian forces since an armistice that followed the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

The Israeli military said Saturday that more than 250,000 people have fled Gaza City for other parts of the territory over the past few weeks, since it intensified its assault on Gaza's largest urban center.

"According to IDF (military) estimates, more than a quarter of a million residents of Gaza City have moved out of the city for their own safety," the military's Arabic-language spokesman Colonel Avichay Adraee said on X.

Russia's central bank on Friday cut its key interest rate, but warned inflation was still too high, amid growing concerns over an economic slowdown amid the Ukraine offensive.