The Lebanese army reportedly targeted on Thursday posts for militants on the outskirts of the northeastern border town of Arsal with heavy artillery, the state-run National News Agency said.

NNA reported that troops shelled with heavy artillery armed men who are entrenched on al-Zamarani and al-Ajram areas on the outskirts of the village.

Despite the strict security measures carried out by the Lebanese security agencies, dormant terrorist cells will reportedly stage a terror attack at a vital area in the country.

Ad Diyar newspaper reported on Thursday that the sleeper cells are mostly residing in Syrian encampments across the country and Palestinian refugee camps, in particular, the southern Ain el-Hilweh refugee camp.

American and allied soldiers are aiming to rapidly train thousands of Iraqi security personnel in the "bare minimum basics" needed to join the fight against militants who swept Baghdad's troops aside.

The Islamic State (IS) jihadist group spearheaded a major June offensive that overran much of Iraq's Sunni Arab heartland, and while pro-government forces have since regained some ground, swathes of territory are still outside Baghdad's control.

Syrian authorities on Wednesday released three fishermen who had been arrested a week ago inside Lebanon's territorial waters.

Al-Jadeed television identified the trio as the Lebanese citizens Khaled Hassan al-Rashidi and Bashir Ahmed al-Mishmshani, who hail from Akkar's Bebnin, and Palestinian national Bahaa al-Sheikh.

Syria will award 50 percent of vacant government posts to relatives of soldiers and government employees killed or paralyzed in the country's conflict, according to a law issued on Wednesday.

The law, decreed by President Bashar al-Assad after passing parliament earlier in the week, comes as the death toll among Syrian government troops grows.

Iran is to help Iraq rebuild its army under an agreement that could formalize Tehran's military support for its neighbor, which remains under assault by the Islamic State (IS) group.

No details of the pact were released but state television said the two sides had "agreed to continue cooperation in the defense arena with the creation of a national army to protect the territorial integrity and security of Iraq."

Some 700 illegal migrants rescued from a ship near the Greek island of Corfu arrived in Italy on Wednesday, after their boat was intercepted while "drifting" towards the coast.

Dozens of official cars met the migrants as they arrived in the port of Gallipoli, in the southeast of Italy, at around 0230 GMT on Wednesday morning, according to an Agence France Presse reporter on the scene.

The Red Cross on Tuesday said it wanted to triple its health budget for conflict-riven Syria to 12 million euros, saying several clinics had either been damaged or closed.

The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies also appealed for health kits and said it needed a total of 122 million Swiss francs (101 million euros, $123 million) to cater to eight million people in Syria in 2015.

A powerful blast from explosives planted in a tunnel under the Old City of Aleppo, in northern Syria, killed or wounded 20 government troops Tuesday, a monitor said.

Jabha Shamiyeh, a new rebel coalition in Aleppo, was behind the blast, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which was not immediately able to give a breakdown of the dead and wounded.

The Syrian army has given dozens of families "safe passage" out of a besieged area east of Damascus, state news agency SANA said on Tuesday.

"Syrian army units gave safe passage to dozens of families from Douma and Zibdin in Eastern Ghouta," said SANA, referring to a rebel-held area that has been under suffocating army siege for more than a year.