An Australian woman of Lebanese origin was barred from leaving Lebanon after her ex-husband's family filed a complaint against her claiming she has been visiting her “boyfriend” in the northern city of Tripoli since arriving in the country on June 20.

Mahassen Issa, 29 and mother of two minors, was supposed to return to Australia last week. But right before her departure, she was contacted by Lebanese authorities informing her that she has been charged with adultery, British newspaper The Guardian reported.

Several Lebanese nationals were onboard an Algerian plane that went missing Thursday during a flight from Burkina Faso to Algiers.

An official source in Lebanon told Agence France-Presse that at least 20 Lebanese nationals were on the flight, including three couples with 10 children.

At least 687 Palestinians have been killed as Israel continued bombarding Gaza for the sixteenth day in a row, while fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants was briefly suspended Wednesday in several flashpoint areas of the Strip to allow convoys of ambulances to retrieve the wounded.

Amid the ongoing violence, Hamas rejected a ceasefire to end 16 days of deadly fighting unless the blockade on the Gaza Strip is lifted, its chief Khaled Meshaal said in Doha.

The emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, arrived unexpectedly in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for talks on regional issues with King Abdullah, Al-Arabiya television said.

The Saudi-owned news channel said the Qatari leader was in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, "to discuss developments in the region".

World efforts to broker a ceasefire in war-torn Gaza gathered pace Monday as Israel pressed a blistering 14-day assault on the enclave, pushing the Palestinian death toll to 572.

As Washington and the United Nations demanded an "immediate ceasefire" in the battered Palestinian enclave, Israel announced that seven more of its soldiers had been killed during fighting in Gaza, raising the overall Israeli death toll to 27, all but two of them soldiers.

The Gaza death toll hit 342 on Saturday as Israeli warplanes intensified their bombardment and troops pressed a ground assault on the 12th day of a major confrontation with Hamas.

The latest incident in Gaza saw one man killed in an air strike on the northern town of Jabaliya shortly after two were killed in a strike near Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said.

More than 200 people have been killed and 1550 others wounded in the ongoing Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, as Hamas officials communicated to Egyptian authorities on Wednesday their rejection of the proposed truce deal.

Hamas rejected the ceasefire proposal which Egypt put forward this week, complaining it had not been a party to the discussions.

Hizbullah has taken into captivity 14 Syrian rebels as the death toll from its clashes with armed groups on the Lebanese-Syrian border has risen to 16, a monitoring group said Monday.

In the evening, LBCI television said “clashes with heavy- and medium-caliber weapons have renewed in the Eastern Mountain Belt amid Syrian air raids targeting the gunmen.”

Clashes between Syrian rebels and Hizbullah on the Lebanese border have killed at least four fighters, a security official said Sunday.

The fighting erupted on Saturday in an undemarcated area of the frontier between Qalamun in Syria and Arsal in Lebanon’s Bekaa region, the Lebanese official told Agence France Presse, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A rocket fired from Syria hit the Israeli-occupied sector of the Golan Heights on Sunday, falling on open ground and causing no casualties, an Israeli army spokeswoman told Agence France Presse.

"The assumption is that it was not a stray," she said, although there was no immediate report of Israeli retaliation.