A soldier who defected the army in October and joined the al-Qaida-linked al-Nusra Front reportedly handed himself over to the Army Intelligence.

The state-run National News Agency reported that Omar Khaled Shamtiyeh turned himself over to the Army Intelligence in North Lebanon.

U.S.-led air strikes hit jihadist positions in the north and east of Syria, including an oil field, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Saturday.

The raids against the Islamic State group came as the jihadists shelled a camp for people displaced from the flashpoint Syrian town of Kobane, killing two civilians, said the monitoring group.

Only one voter arrived at the Lebanese embassy in Kuwait to vote in the parliamentary elections, despite the extension of the legislature's tenure until 2017.

Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil was determined to hold the elections in Kuwait and Australia as the parliament extension law wouldn't come in force until Tuesday.

General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim stated on Saturday that freeing the abducted soldiers and policemen is a thorny file that needs patience and a long time to work out, assuring that he will not negotiate the kidnappers on corpses.

“Serious negotiations are about to begin with a list of three choices that have been set by al-Nusra in preparation for the swap,” said Ibrahim in an interview to the al-Akhbar daily.

Speaker Nabih Berri stressed on Saturday that the presidential deadlock should end swiftly after the parliament tenure extension became a de-facto.

“Now it's time for us to discuss the presidential elections,” Berri said in comments published in al-Mustaqbal newspaper.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat held talks in the Russian capital Moscow with former Syrian National Coalition leader Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib.

According to al-Akhbar newspaper published on Saturday, the meeting between Jumblat and Khatib was held at the headquarters of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Pope Francis was urged Friday to use a visit to Turkey later this month to press for the liberation of two orthodox bishops kidnapped in Syria in April 2013.

Theophilos Kuriakose, head of the Syriac Orthodox Church in Europe, called on Francis to raise the issue during a scheduled visit to Ankara on November 28.

The father of a French jihadist who became an expert bomb-maker and was likely killed in U.S. air strikes in Syria has said his son wanted to "die a martyr."

David Daoud Drugeon, 25, is thought to have been traveling in a car in Idlib province when a drone strike hit the vehicle and likely killed him and the driver, a U.S. official and media reports said Thursday.

Al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate Al-Nusra Front seized three villages from rebels, including a U.S.-backed group, in Syria's northwestern Idlib province, a monitor said on Friday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Al-Nusra had taken control of Sufuhun, Al-Fateera and Hizareen in Idlib, where the jihadist group has been battling other rebels.

Syria's Muslim Brotherhood, one of President Bashar Assad's political adversaries in exile, has appointed a 70-year-old British-educated ophthalmologist as its new leader.

The Brotherhood's council elected Mohammad Hekmat Walid for a four-year term in a vote Thursday in Istanbul, where the Syrian opposition in exile is based, a statement said.