Middle Orient

Israel had deliberately avoided killing Hezbollah members during a strike on Syria last week, reported the New York Times on Thursday.

The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Thursday that Iran will destroy U.S. warships that threaten Iranian security in the Persian Gulf, a day after President Trump issued a similar threat regarding Iranian ships that “harass” U.S. vessels.

Israel on Saturday accused the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah of “provocative” activity along the Lebanese-Israeli frontier and said it would complain to the U.N. Security Council.

The Iraqi army on Sunday said its air force carried out a series of strikes against positions held by the so-called Islamic State in rural Salahuddin province, killing a ‘group of’ fighters.

Fifteen fighters from the Syrian regime and the Lebanese Hezbollah party were killed last week in the Daraa countryside, reported the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Two missiles from an Israeli drone targeted a four-wheel-drive vehicle carrying two members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah on Wednesday near the Syria-Lebanon border, but neither person was hurt, a member of the militant group said.

Several incidents that have recently occurred between Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have brought the decades-long conflict between the two back into focus.

Iraqi security forces killed up to 23 Islamic State (IS) militants in clashes in a rural area in the northern province of Kirkuk, the Iraqi military said.

Hezbollah is stepping up a campaign to place its allies at the heart of Lebanon’s banking system as the US seeks to disrupt the armed group’s financial networks, four senior Arab financiers said on Thursday.

Humat al Aqsa (HAA), a Gaza-based group that has long been suspected of being founded, directed and funded by senior Hamas political leader Fathi Hamad, recently promoted joint military operations with militant groups in the Gaza Strip on its social networking platforms.