A book on the Israeli secret service, Mossad, revealed the details of the assassination of Hizbullah prominent official Imad Mughnieh in Syria in 2008, reported al-Khaleej newspaper on Tuesday.

Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service by Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal dedicated a whole chapter to the assassination of the secretive Hizbullah official, who was killed in car bomb in Damascus.

The foreign policy outlook of U.S. President Barak Obama's nominee for defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, is "cause for concern" for Israel, parliament speaker Reuven Rivlin said on Tuesday.

"This concept of 'splendid isolation' which Hagel espouses changes U.S. strategy in the world and accordingly it also affects Israel," Rivlin said in a statement. "This outlook must give Israel cause for concern but not scare it," said Rivlin, adding it was "important that Israel know how to deal with" such a worldview.

Advocacy group Amnesty International has called for the release of an Egyptian journalist facing military trial under a controversial law that allows the army to court-martial civilians.

The army arrested Mohamed Sabry, a freelance video journalist and an activist who opposed military trials, in the eastern Sinai peninsula while he was working on a story for the Reuters news agency, Amnesty International said.

Cyprus President Demetris Christofias will pay an official visit to Lebanon on Thursday to discuss the prospect of cooperation in the exploration of offshore oil and gas.

Christofias will hold talks with President Michel Suleiman "to review economic issues and growth prospects that are opening up in the region in relation to the discovery of large reserves of hydrocarbons," a Cypriot official said on Monday.

Bulgarian officials have removed a senior investigator from a probe into a tourist bus bomb attack that killed five Israelis, after she revealed sensitive information to the media, BTA news agency reported Monday.

Stanelia Karadzhova, head of the regional investigation unit in Burgas, where last July's attack took place, had been taken off the case, the state news agency reported.

The body of 46-year-old Lebanese Fouad Elias Abou Murad was transferred from Israel into Lebanon on Monday through al-Naqoura border crossing.

Fouad's body was handed over to his family, who hail from the town of Jdeidet Marjeyoun.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said Israel would erect a new security fence along its armistice line with Syria in order to protect the Jewish state from "infiltrations and terror."

Speaking at the beginning of the weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu noted that a new, fortified barrier along Israel's border with Egypt, replacing an older one, was nearly complete.

The aging Christians holed up inside a retirement home in the devastated northern Syrian city of Aleppo have no light, no telephone lines, and little idea of what is happening in the outside world.

But fellow Christians and rebel fighters still ensure they do not go hungry, bringing the dozen or so residents whatever food they can every day.

Egyptian security forces have seized U.S.-made anti-tank and surface-to-air missiles destined for Gaza, where militants have said they would acquire more weapons to use against Israel, security officials said on Friday.

The officials said six missiles were found hidden in the Sinai, which borders both the Gaza Strip and Israel, after security forces were tipped off to the hiding place.

A Yemeni man has been arrested on charges of spying for Israel and will be tried this week, the defense ministry said on Friday.

"Abraham al-Dharrahi, a 24-year-old Yemeni IT worker, will be tried in the next two days in Yemen's criminal court on charges of espionage for Israel's Mossad intelligence agency," the ministry quoted a judicial source as saying.