Israel has struck a deal to deport tens of thousands of illegal African migrants to Uganda, Haaretz newspaper reported on Friday.

It said that a court gag order barring identification of the destination country had been lifted at its request, but that the government still refused to give any details of the deal.

Britain advised its citizens on Friday against all but essential travel to Lebanon, citing a recent uptick in violence and wider tensions in the region.

The Foreign Office said in the advice that British nationals already in the country should consider leaving if it is not essential for them to be here.

Israel deployed its Iron Dome missile defense system in Tel Aviv on Friday, as the United States weighed military strikes on neighboring Syria, local media said.

Army radio said that a battery of the mobile system was set up during the morning in the greater Tel Aviv area.

The spokesperson of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon denied on Friday that the peacekeeping command had decided to evacuate civilian employees and their families.

“There is no decision to pull out civilian employees or their families from Lebanon,” UNIFIL spokeswoman Antoinette Midday told Voice of Lebanon (93.3) radio.

The quiet hospital ward in northern Israel is a world away from the ravages of Syria's civil war but scores of wounded Syrians, ignoring long-standing taboos concerning relations with the Jewish state, are receiving treatment here.

Fatima, a Syrian woman who ended up in Ziv hospital with her daughter after a blast shattered their legs in their hometown of Daraa, was full of praise for the medical staff.

Israeli President Shimon Peres said Thursday that Israel was not involved in the conflict in neighboring Syria, but will respond with all its might if attacked.

This came amid expectations of a Western strike against the regime in Damascus in response to an alleged chemical attack last week.

Any military action against Syria will have consequences beyond the region and leave Israel in flames, Iran's army chief of staff General Hasan Firouzabadi said in remarks reported Thursday.

"Any military action against Syria will drive the Zionists to the edge of fire," Firouzabadi said in a statement carried by the official IRNA news agency.

A Palestinian from Gaza who was snatched from Ukraine and locked in an Israeli prison has ended a week-long hunger strike, Palestinian militants and an Israeli official said on Thursday.

Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said on its website that Dirar Abu Sisi ended his protest on Wednesday after reaching an unspecified agreement with officials at Eshel prison, near the southern Israeli city of Beersheva.

Israeli media and officials sought to calm the public on Thursday, as queues for gas masks lengthened amid expectations of a US-led military strike against neighboring Syria.

"Keep calm and carry on" was the headline of a front-page analysis in the Jerusalem Post, echoing a World War II British government slogan.

The Israeli cabinet authorized on Wednesday a partial call-up of army reservists amid growing expectations of a foreign military strike on neighboring Syria, army radio reported.

The unspecified number of troops are attached to units stationed in the north of the country, which borders both Lebanon and the Golan Heights, seized from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War, it said.