The next few hours will witness a breakthrough concerning the soldiers and policemen held captive by Islamist gunmen, Muslim Scholars committee member Sheikh Samih Ezzeddine revealed.

“The security personnel, who were held hostage, were divided among several (extremist) factions,” Ezzedine told the pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat on Sunday.

Security agencies enforced strict security measures in areas in eastern Lebanon as several Syrian nationals have been arrested recently to “avert any possible terrorist sabotage operation.”

“The strict security measures come in light of the clashes in (the northeastern border town of) Arsal in an attempt to prevent any sabotage operations from occurring,” security sources said in comments published in the pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat.

Abdullah Abu Shabab fled the war in Syria to shelter in Gaza, the home his Palestinian parents lost in the 1967 war. But in the end an Israeli bomb killed him.

At least 16 civilians were killed in violence in Syria's second city of Aleppo on Saturday, residents and a monitoring group said.

Residents found children 'torn apart' after a regime helicopter dumped a barrel bomb on a rebel-held area, a local man said.

Looking at the Islamic State's string of military conquests in northern Iraq over the past week, one could think the jihadists outnumber their opponents 10 to 1.

After routing government forces in an onslaught launched on June 9, it has managed to hold Iraq's second city Mosul and gone on the offensive again last week, forcing the Kurdish peshmerga to retreat on several fronts and seizing the country's largest dam.

Lebanese Force leader Samir Geagea rejected any armed presence for Syrians on Lebanese territories, considering that the situation in the northeastern town of Arsal will deteriorate as long as the conflict in neighboring country Syria is ongoing and Hizbullah is engaged in the war.

Geagea wondered in an interview with Free Lebanon radio why the army doesn't prevent Hizbullah fighters from entering Syria.

Several hundred Syrian refugees who had been sheltering in the northeastern border town of Arsal, where the army and jihadists have been fighting, crossed back into Syria on Friday, a nun assisting them said.

Sister Agnes, a nun based in Syria, told Agence France Presse a first group of 350 of some 1,700 refugees who left the town of Arsal yesterday passed through the Masnaa border crossing back into Syria on Friday.

Al-Mustaqbal movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri made on Friday a surprise return to Beirut and met with Premier Tammam Salam at the Grand Serail to discuss a Saudi military aid.

Hariri left Lebanon in early 2011, months after the collapse of his national unity cabinet. He has repeatedly claimed that security reasons were preventing his return to Beirut.

The Lebanese army apprehended on Friday a sniper who was covering the withdrawal of Islamist jihadists from the northeastern border town of Arsal.

The state-run National News Agency identified the sniper, who was on the roof of Abou Ismail mosque in the town, with his initials M. H.

Islamic State jihadists captured the key Brigade 93 Syrian army base in Raqa province overnight, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday.

"The IS took Brigade 93 after fierce fighting and a triple suicide bomb attack," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said, adding that government forces now hold just one position in the province at Tabqa military airport.