Beirut - Lebanon has arrested a man who spurred his two-year-old son to beat up a Syrian child after a video of the shocking blows went viral, state media reported on Sunday.

Beirut - Syrian regime forces launched an offensive Saturday to retake a gas field in Homs province seized two days ago by jihadists who killed 270 people, most of them executed, a monitoring group said.

Jerusalem - Israel said Friday that it would keep up its attack on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip for as long as it took Palestinian militants to stop firing rockets across the border.

Beirut - The death toll in Syria's three-year war has eclipsed 170,000 people, one-third of them civilians, a monitoring group said in a new toll released on Thursday.

Beirut - As Palestinian-Syrian refugees try to escaped their warn torn country, they try to find refuge in a safer land. A new report by Amnesty International shows Lebanon is barring the refugees from entering the country.

Beirut - A powerful jihadist group known for its ruthless tactics and systemic abuses in the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts announced Sunday the establishment of a "caliphate", or Islamist state.

Beirut - A man blew himself up in a Beirut hotel on Wednesday as security forces stormed his room, killing himself and wounding 10 other people, a senior Lebanese official said.

Beirut - Al-Qaeda's Syrian offshoot on Wednesday made an oath of loyalty to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant at a key town on the Iraqi border, a monitor said.

Beirut - Syrian troops backed by fighters from Lebanon's Hezbollah on Sunday launched an assault to oust rebels from the foothills of the Qalamun mountains north of the capital, state television said.

Beirut - Syrian army helicopter fire killed nine children in a camp for displaced civilians near the Jordanian border on Wednesday, a monitoring group said.

Beirut - Rebels have stepped up attacks on regime-held areas of Aleppo in the run-up to Tuesday presidential election, killing 54 in two days, a monitoring group said.

Tripoli - For Abu Nur, a Syrian war refugee in northern Lebanon, next week's certain re-election of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad buries any hope he had of returning home soon.

Beirut - Syrian expats streamed to their embassy in Beirut Wednesday to vote in a controversial presidential election, as war raged at home and bombs killed more than 40 people in the city of Aleppo.

Beirut - Syria's Al-Qaeda branch staged four suicide bomb attacks on army positions Sunday, leaving dozens of casualties, in a bid to cut off Idlib province from the coast, a monitoring group said.

New York - Originally lauded as a progressive alternative to tyranny in the Middle East, the Arab Spring has been a season of persecution for Christians. As persecution reaches pandemic proportions, the very survival of Christianity in the region is in question.

The Hezbollah group in Lebanon has said to the Maronite church's Patriarch that they disapprove of his trip to Jerusalem where he is due to meet Pope Francis. They say such a visit on his part will have "negative repercussions."

Beirut - A car bomb killed at least 29 civilians and wounded dozens more on the Syrian side of the Bab al-Salama border crossing with Turkey on Thursday, a monitoring group said.

Beirut - Evidence "strongly suggests" Syria's government used chlorine gas on three towns in mid-April in violation of the chemical weapons treaty it joined last year, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.

Beirut - Some 2,000 rebels and civilians were to begin leaving besieged opposition-held districts of Homs city in central Syria on Wednesday under a deal between fighters and the government.

Beirut - Fighting between rival jihadist groups in eastern Syria killed 63 people on Monday, despite a call from Al-Qaeda's chief for a ceasefire, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.