Jihadists have set hard demands in exchange for the release of the Lebanese soldiers and policemen, who were abducted in the northeastern border town of Arsal, al-Joumhouria newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The daily pointed out that the al-Qaida-affiliate al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) raised the ceiling of their demands when Qatari and Turkish authorities announced that they entered the line of negotiations to release of the kidnapped security personnel.

From Washington and Paris to Tehran and Damascus, it seems everyone agrees on the growing need to fight "terrorism". What exactly the word means is another matter entirely.

U.S. warplanes carried out their first air strike on the Islamic State near Baghdad, as world diplomats pledged Monday to support Iraq in its fight against the militants.

The United States early last month began air strikes against IS positions in northern Iraq, but Monday's announcement that the campaign had targeted the jihadists near the Iraqi capital marks an escalation in the scope of the mission.

Security forces on Monday arrested more than 25 Syrians during raids on refugee gatherings in the northern Koura district and the Northern Metn area of Dekwaneh, state-run National News Agency reported, amid a continued crackdown that started in the wake of the Arsal battle.

“Army intelligence agents raided the places of residence of some Syrian refugees in the Koura towns of Batroumine, Diddeh, Fih and Qalhat, arresting 25 suspect,” NNA said.

Islamic State militants lost a vital supply route in eastern Syria on Monday with the destruction of the last bridge in the city of Deir Ezzor, a monitoring group said.

The regime of President Bashar al-Assad is believed to have caused the explosion which hit the Siyassiyeh crossing over the Euphrates river, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Israeli army is preparing to fight Hizbullah, which has developed new capabilities due to its experience in Syria's war, a senior Israeli military official said.

“Hizbullah’s confidence is growing, along with its combat experience in Syria,” the Jerusalem Post quoted the officer, who was not named, as saying.

The United Nations has pulled back its peacekeepers in the Golan to the Israeli side after Syrian fighters advanced near their positions, a U.N. spokesman said Monday.

The Syrian armed groups posed "a direct threat to the safety and security" of the troops from the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

As many as 500 migrants are feared to have drowned after traffickers rammed and sank their boat in what the International Organization for Migration (IOM) described Monday as "the worst shipwreck in years".

Horrific details of the shipwreck near Malta, told to IOM by survivors, came after dozens of African migrants were reported missing and feared dead after their boat sank off the coast of Libya on Sunday.

Iran said Monday it rejected a U.S. request for its cooperation against the jihadist Islamic State as part of an international coalition whose true aim Tehran sees as regime change in Syria.

Seen from Tehran, which has helped both Damascus and Baghdad to confront IS advances, the coalition lacks credibility because some of its members had financed and armed the group as part of their campaign to bring down Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Tehran ridiculed an international conference on the jihadist threat that opened in Paris on Monday, insisting the Islamic State cannot be defeated without the support of its ally Damascus.

Neither Iran nor Syria were invited to the meeting in the French capital, despite the Damascus government's involvement in almost daily military action against IS.