Trump is renewing his criticism of Pope Leo XIV even as Rubio prepares to visit Vatican City, ostensibly to ease tensions between Washington and the Holy See.

The Health Ministry in Beirut said Tuesday that 8,311 people were also wounded during the same period.

A branch of the Catholic church expressed deep concern Monday over reports that Israel was demolishing civilian and religious buildings in parts of southern Lebanon under its control, following claims that a convent had been bulldozed.

The Council of Melkite Greek Catholic Bishops in Lebanon urged the Lebanese government and the United Nations to protect the property of civilians and religious institutions in southern Lebanon, citing in particular the village of Yaroun where officials said Israeli troops destroyed a Melkite convent earlier this month among other demolition. The bishops called the destruction of buildings, after residents of the area had evacuated, a "deep wound in the national and human conscience."

The U.S. military said Monday that two American-flagged merchant ships had successfully transited the Strait of Hormuz after it launched a new initiative to restore traffic. Iran has effectively controlled the critical waterway since the U.S. and Israel launched the war in late February.

Breaking Iran's chokehold over the strait would ease global economic concerns and deny Tehran a major source of leverage in talks aimed at ending the war. But U.S. President Donald Trump's latest effort also risks reigniting full-scale fighting as the U.S. and Iran steadily ramp up pressure.

The U.S. stock market is holding tentatively around its record heights Monday, while oil prices climb with uncertainty about when oil tankers can resume crossing the Strait of Hormuz and restore the world's flow of crude. Dueling claims about a possible Iranian strike on a U.S. Navy vessel in the strait heightened the tensions.

The S&P 500 rose 0.1%, coming off its latest all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 76 points, or 0.2%, as of 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.1% higher.

More than 300 families have been evacuated after massive amounts of ash billowed from the Mayon volcano over the weekend due to the collapse of lava deposits from its slopes, officials said Monday.

There was no explosive eruption from Mayon, which has been erupting mildly on and off since January, but huge deposits of lava on its southwestern slope suddenly cascaded down in a pyroclastic flow — an avalanche of hot rocks, ash and gas — before nightfall on Saturday, said Teresito Bacolcol, director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.

European leaders on Monday said that U.S. President Donald Trump's snap decision to pull thousands of U.S. troops out of Germany came as a surprise but is a fresh sign that Europe must take care of its own security.

The Pentagon announced last week that it would pull some 5,000 troops out of Germany, but Trump told reporters on Saturday that "we're going to cut way down. And we're cutting a lot further than 5,000."

One Palestinian man was killed and four others seriously wounded during an Israeli military raid in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Nablus on Sunday, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said the man's wife was in labor at a local hospital when she was informed of his death.

Israeli army chief Eyal Zamir has instructed the Northern Command and the Israel Air Force to strike the production and supply chain of Hezbollah's FPV drones, including deep inside Lebanon, Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported on Friday.

The ongoing war between Israel and Hezbollah is far from the first conflict between them. The two have an enmity that goes back more than four decades, with outbursts of fighting or outright war punctuated by periods of tense calm.

Here is a timeline of some significant events in the hostilities between the two: