The family of a Hizbullah member convicted in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri described Thursday the guilty verdict handed down by a U.N.-backed tribunal as a "grave injustice."

Hurricane Laura made landfall Thursday morning in southwest Louisiana as an "extremely dangerous" Category 4 storm, forecasters said.

The National Hurricane Center said the storm made landfall near Cameron, Louisiana. It had maximum sustained winds of 150mph (240 kph), making it the most powerful hurricane to strike the U.S. so far this year.

A Hizbullah spokesman on Wednesday declined to comment on the overnight flare-up on the Lebanese-Israeli border but a member of the group said no Hizbullah positions were hit by Israel as claimed by its army.

The Hizbullah member spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel views with "great gravity" the latest flare-up on the Lebanese border and pledged a tough response in the event of further incidents.

"We shall react forcefully to any attack against us," Netanyahu said in a statement. "I advise Hizbullah not to test Israel's strength. Hizbullah is once again endangering Lebanon due to its aggression."

Israeli attack helicopters struck observation posts of the Hizbullah group along the Lebanon border overnight after shots were fired at Israeli troops operating in the area, the military said Wednesday.

Lebanon's central bank governor warned in an interview published Tuesday that the bank cannot continue using its foreign currency reserves to finance trade, signaling he may soon be unable to sustain subsidies on basic goods.

In an interview with the French edition of the Saudi-owned Arab News, Riad Salameh said the central bank "is not the state" and cannot be blamed for everything.

Three weeks after a catastrophic explosion ripped through Beirut, killing nearly 200 people and rendering thousands homeless, the change many hoped for is nowhere in sight. Instead, activists said they are back to square one.

When a massive explosion ripped through Beirut this month, Yorgo Younes scurried to flee his building. He saw children crying and adults screaming as they scrambled for safety, one running barefoot over jagged pieces of glass in a state of shock and fear.

The 10 firefighters who received the call a bit before 6 p.m. -- alerting them of a big fire at the nearby port of Beirut -- could not know what awaited them.

The brigade of nine men and one woman could not know about the stockpile of ammonium nitrate warehoused since 2013 along a busy motorway in the heart of a densely populated residential area -- a danger that had only grown with every passing year.

Pakistan issued sweeping financial sanctions against Afghanistan's Taliban, just as the militant group is in the midst of U.S.-led peace process in the neighboring country.

The orders, which were made public late on Friday, identified dozens of individuals, including the Taliban's chief peace negotiator Abdul Ghani Baradar and several members of the Haqqani family, including Sirajuddin, the current head of the Haqqani network and deputy head of the Taliban.