Anis Naccache, a former pro-Palestinian militant who participated in the 1975 kidnapping of oil ministers in Vienna, died Monday after battling COVID-19, a Palestinian official and Lebanese media said. He was 69.

Naccache, a Lebanese citizen, participated in attacks around the world but spent much of the past two decades running a Beirut-based think tank and frequently appeared on TV shows as an analyst on Middle Eastern affairs.

The interior minister of Libya's U.N.-backed government survived an ambush by gunmen on his motorcade on Sunday, a brazen attack highlighting the towering challenges that remain for the newly appointed government that is trying to unite the country before elections late this year.

Armed men opened fire at Fathi Bashagha's motorcade on a highway in Tripoli, wounding at least one of his guards, said Amin al-Hashmi, a spokesman for the Tripoli-based Health Ministry.

Three sticky bomb attacks in the Afghan capital Kabul on Saturday killed at least five people and wounded two others, a police official said, amid a surge in violence in the war-torn country.

Kabul police spokesman Ferdaws Faramarz said two explosions caused by sticky bombs attached to vehicles took place 15 minutes apart and a third targeting a police vehicle exploded about two hours later.

The U.N. Security Council has given a green light to keep the U.N.-backed tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister Rafik Hariri operating and funded for at least this year.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a letter to the council circulated Friday that the president of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, Judge Ivana Hrdličková, informed him in November that its work wouldn't be finished by the expiration of its mandate Feb. 28.

Lebanon's top judicial body on Friday named a new judge to lead the investigation into last year's massive explosion at Beirut's port, the National News Agency said, a day after his predecessor was removed following legal challenges by former ministers he had accused of negligence that led to the blast.

The Higher Judicial Council named Judge Tarek al-Bitar as the new prosecutor after he was proposed for the post by caretaker Minister of Justice Marie-Claude Najem, NNA said.

The prosecutor investigating last year's massive blast in Beirut was formally notified Friday that he would no longer lead an enquiry into last year's deadly port explosion, state-run Lebanon's National News Agency reported.

Thursday's decision by the country's highest court to remove Investigating Judge Fadi Sawwan came after legal challenges by senior officials he had accused of negligence that led to the blast, considered one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history.

The Internal Security Forces arrested three suspects involved in smuggling people through Tripoli’s al-Abdeh shore area to Cyprus, the ISF said in a statement on Friday.

Relatives of the Beirut port blast victims held a protest Thursday and blocked traffic with burning tires outside the Palace of Justice in Beirut after the lead judicial investigator probing the case was removed by the Court of Cassation.

“The blood of our martyrs is still on the ground, so do not turn us into killers! We are willing to take our right with our hand and we will start escalating as of tonight,” a spokesman for the families said.

The Court of Cassation, headed by Judge Jamal Hajjar, decided to recuse Judge Fadi Sawwan from investigation into the Beirut port blast case, the National News Agency reported Thursday.

U.S. President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by phone Wednesday after a month of silence that raised concerns in Israel about a frostier relationship between the two allies.

Netanyahu's office was first to announce the conversation, releasing a photo of a smiling prime minister holding a phone to his ear. The statement said the conversation was "warm and friendly" and lasted about an hour.