Syrian armed gunmen are planning to open a front in Lebanon by invading the northeastern border town of Arsal and advancing into al-Qaa, Ras Baalbek and other nearby villages.

According to the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Siyassah, the al-Qaida-affiliate al-Nusra Front, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and the Free Syrian Army have been entrenched for the past two months and a half on the mountains overseeing the Lebanese Bekaa on the porous Syrian-Lebanese border.

The U.S. Congress on Saturday unanimously approved fresh economic sanctions against Russia and lethal weapons for Kiev, defying President Barack Obama and hardening American lawmakers' response to a Kremlin-backed insurgency in Ukraine.

Identical texts of the Ukraine Freedom Support Act passed both the Senate and House of Representatives on Thursday, but because of a technical issue it returned to the Senate where it passed by unanimous consent moments before the chamber adjourned late Saturday night.

Kurdish forces killed at least 16 Islamic State group fighters in an attack on Saturday in northeast Syria near the border with Turkey, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The assault targeted IS positions south of the town of Ras al-Ain in Hasakeh province, the Britain-based monitoring group added.

Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations Jan Eliasson is scheduled to arrive in Lebanon on Sunday on a three-day visit aimed at discussing the case of Syrian refugees, reported the daily An Nahar on Saturday.

Eliasson will arrive on Sunday for talks with Speaker Nabih Berri, Prime Minister Tammam Salam, Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi, and a number of high-ranking officials.

The signing of the final contracts for equipping the Lebanese army with French weapons might take place “next week in Beirut, not in France,” a media report said Friday, as Prime Minister Tammam Salam met French President Francois Hollande at the Élysée Palace.

“After the contracts are signed, the file will be sent to Saudi Arabia for approval and it would then pay 20% of the total amount of the grant so that the delivery process can begin,” LBCI television reported.

Activist Mohsen al-Masri spent two years being dragged between prisons controlled by the Syrian security services, enduring savage beatings and being hanged from the ceiling for hours at a time.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov resumed on Friday talks with Lebanese officials on the presidential impasse following his return from Syria.

Bogdanov met early Friday with Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi in Bkirki.

An Al-Jazeera Arabic correspondent in Syria has been killed covering fighting in his hometown in the south of the war-torn country, the Qatar-based news channel announced on Thursday.

The army arrested Thursday a fugitive at a Syrian refugee camp in Arsal over ties to terrorist groups, as calm returned to the northeastern border town after residents from neighboring al-Bazzaliyeh reopened a vital road they had blocked in the wake of the execution of captive soldier Ali al-Bazzal.

“The Lebanese army raided a camp in Arsal and arrested a person who has ties to terrorist groups,” MTV reported.

Jihadist attacks around the world in November killed a total of 5,042 people, showing Islamist extremism is "stronger than ever" despite al-Qaida's declining role, a new study published on Thursday said.

There were 664 attacks in 14 countries during the month, according to the joint report by the BBC World Service and the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) at King's College London.