A suicide blast hit Lebanon's Bekaa Valley after Hezbollah fighters took a Syrian border town. Meanwhile, a Syrian opposition figure broaches selling the Golan for Israeli military aid.
As Ariel Sharon was buried under the protection of Israel's Iron Dome missile shield, joyful celebrations broke out at Lebanon's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.
Lebanon's government has ordered the coastal city of Tripoli placed under army control amid growing sectarian clashes pitting Sunni residents against Alawites.
Palestinian refugees fleeing the violence in Syria have for the past three weeks been refused entry into Lebanon, with thousands turned back at the border.
A Salafist group opposed to the Assad regime attacks Israel, which “retaliates” by bombing the pro-Assad PFLP-GC, while presumed Shi’ite militants blow up Salafist mosques in Tripoli.
The Islamic Jihad movement in Gaza announced that it is suspending ties with Hamas, accusing Gaza authorities of being responsible for the death of one of the group’s members.
Lebanon’s hashish heartland of the Bekaa Valley is increasingly embroiled in the civil war raging across the border in Syria, with a wave of sectarian clashes and abductions.
Turkey sees in the battle for Qusayr a strategy to create an Alawite mini-state within Syria, purged of Sunni Muslims, to which the ruling elite can withdraw for a last stand.
Turkey will build a 2.5-kilometer wall along the Cilvegözü post on the border with Syria, near where a twin bomb attack killed 51 and wounded more than 100 earlier this month.
As the Friends of Syria summit opened in Istanbul, US Secretary of State John Kerry announced $100 million in new “non-lethal” aid to the Syrian opposition.
Opposition activists from Syrian President Bashar Assad's Alawite sect publicly broke ranks with the regime at a meeting in Cairo, and urged their fellow Alawites in the army to rebel.
A Lebanese judge issued an arrest warrant for a top Syrian intelligence official and his aide for alleged involvement in a bombing plot in Lebanon.
