Military officials from more than 30 nations will take part in Paris talks on the creation of an international security force for Ukraine, a French military official said Monday.

Such an international force would aim to dissuade Russia from launching another offensive after any ceasefire in Ukraine comes into effect.

Pope Francis followed the Vatican's weeklong spiritual retreat via videoconference on Monday as he continued his recovery from double pneumonia and looked ahead to the 12th anniversary of his election amid questions about what the future of his papacy might look like.

As he did on Sunday, Francis participated in the retreat remotely from the Rome hospital where he is being treated. He could see and hear the Rev. Roberto Pasolini, preacher of the papal household, but the priests, bishops and cardinals gathered for the retreat in the Vatican auditorium could not see or hear him.

Syria's interim government on Monday announced the end of a days-long military operation against insurgents loyal to ousted president Bashar Assad and his family in the worst fighting since the end of the 13-year civil war in December.

The Defense Ministry's announcement comes after a surprise attack by gunmen from the Alawite community on a police patrol near the port city of Lattakia Thursday spiraled into widespread clashes across Syria's coastal region, during which monitoring groups said hundreds of civilians were killed.

Thousands of Syrians from the unrest-hit coastal area have fled to neighboring Lebanon, mostly through unofficial crossings, after around 1,000 people were killed there in clashes and massacres, mostly civilians.

The U.N. refugee agency said in a statement that according to local authorities, 6,078 people have arrived in about a dozen villages in northern Lebanon's Akkar province fleeing the fighting and mass killings, while arrivals in other parts of the country were still being verified.

The United States has declined to renew a waiver that had allowed Iraq to buy electricity from Iran without running afoul of sanctions, a U.S. official said Sunday.

The previous waiver expired Saturday and the U.S. Department of State did not renew it, the U.S. embassy in Baghdad said in a statement.

Donald Trump, the real estate developer turned commander in chief, is laying bare his style of diplomacy in the early weeks of his new term: It's a whole lot like a high-stakes business deal, and his No. 1 goal is to come out of the transaction on top.

The tactics are clear in his brewing trade war with Canada and Mexico, in his approach to Russia's war on Ukraine and in his selection of the first country he will visit in his second term.

Saudi Arabia is to host talks on Tuesday between the United States and Ukraine in a new diplomatic push after an argument erupted during President Volodymyr Zelensky's Feb. 28 visit to the White House.

The oil-rich kingdom may seem like an unusual venue for talks aimed at smoothing over relations after the blowup. But Saudi Arabia under its assertive Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been positioning itself as an ideal location for possible peace negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow — and even the first face-to-face talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump.

Syria's top diplomat and his counterparts from neighboring countries have called for the lifting of Western-led sanctions on Syria and post-war reconciliation.

The foreign ministers of Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon made their remarks alongside Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani following a meeting in the Jordanian capital Amman.

Syria's Druze minority has a long history of cutting their own path to survive among the country's powerhouses. They are now trying again to navigate a new, uncertain Syria since the fall of longtime autocrat Bashar Assad.

Members of the small religious sect find themselves caught between two forces that many of them distrust: the new, Islamist-led government in Damascus and Syria's hostile neighbor, Israel, which has used the plight of the Druze as a pretext to intervene in the country.

The death toll from two days of clashes between Syrian security forces and loyalists of ousted President Bashar Assad and revenge killings that followed has risen to more than 1,000, a war monitoring group said Saturday, making it one of the deadliest acts of violence since Syria's conflict began 14 years ago.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in addition to 745 civilians killed, mostly in shootings from close distance, 125 government security force members and 148 militants with armed groups affiliated with Assad were killed. It added that electricity and drinking water were cut off in large areas around the city of Latakia.