A decision by Shiite parties Hizbullah and AMAL to cancel daily iftars held throughout the holy month of Ramadan over security fears angered charities, al-Joumhouria newspaper reported on Saturday.

The daily said that charities complained about the decision, in particular those that follow Shiite scholar Sayyed Ali Fadlallah and Higher Shiite Islamic Council Sheikh Abdul Amir Qabalan.

More than six million children affected by the Syria conflict desperately need humanitarian aid, the U.N.'s children's agency said Friday, with the number in need rising by a third in a year.

UNICEF is warning that despite the spiraling numbers the organization may have to consider cutting some vital services because of a lack of funding.

The opposition Syrian National Coalition on Friday snapped back at Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil, calling on him to press Hizbullah to withdraw from Syria “instead of launching verdicts against Syrian refugees.”

“Once again Lebanese Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil comes up with a number of fallacies that contradict with the living situations of Syrian refugees in Lebanon,” Coalition member Alia Mansour said in a statement.

Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil warned on Friday of the rising tensions between the Lebanese people and Syrian refugees due to the burden the latter is posing on Lebanon, rejecting the establishment of camps for the displaced within the country.

He said during a press conference: “Legitimizing Syrian refugee camps is a violation of the constitution, which speaks against nationalization.”

Two Syrian nationals were killed on Friday and and five other people wounded in five air raids staged by the Syrian regime on the outskirts of the eastern border town of Arsal.

Media reports said that the raid targeted the Wadi al-Ajram area, 7 kilometers into the Lebanese depth.

Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea has accused his rival Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun of deceiving the public and creating a media stir to win the backing of the rival Lebanese parties for the country's top Christian post.

“Aoun hasn't proposed a serious initiative. He made a media stir to pressure the Lebanese parties into electing him a president,” Geagea told al-Joumhouria daily in an interview published on Friday.

A U.S. teenager who agreed to marry a fighter from the militant network that is threatening to overrun Iraq has been arrested and charged with trying to help a foreign terror group.

Shannon Maureen Conley, 19, was arrested in April as she prepared to fly to Turkey to join the jihadist, who was fighting in Syria, according to court documents unsealed this week. 

Iraq risks descending into "Syria-like chaos" if its political class fails to unite and agree on a government, the United Nations envoy to Baghdad told Agence France Presse on Thursday.

Nickolay Mladenov urged Iraq's leaders to press on with a political process that involves selecting a parliament speaker, a president and finally a prime minister, but admitted that tensions were worse than during the peak of the country's all-out sectarian war in 2006.

Women have been the victims of arbitrary arrest, torture, harassment and discrimination at the hands of government and rebel forces in Syria's three-year conflict, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.

The New York-based global rights watchdog, in a report, urged the international community to "hold those responsible for such abuses to account".

The United Nations said Thursday it sees no let-up in refugees fleeing war-ravaged Syria for neighboring Jordan, and appealed for funds to help the kingdom cope with the influx.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said it expects the number of Syrian refugees in Jordan to increase by as much as 33 percent to up to 800,000 by the end of this year.