Maronite Bishop Boulos Mattar stressed on Monday that linking the presidential election with the conflict in the region is a great mistake, hailing the dialogue between the political arch-foes.

“If Lebanon was a leading country in making culture... then how could it link its fate to that of other countries in the Middle East?” Mattar wondered in his sermon on the occasion of St. Maroun Day.

A Lebanese professor at the University of South Carolina's school of public health was reportedly killed in an apparent murder-suicide on Thursday.

The deaths occurred at the university's school of public health.

The Islamic State group said a coalition air strike Friday killed an American woman it was holding hostage in Syria, in a claim that could not be immediately verified.

In Jordan, meanwhile, thousands of people marched to demand retribution against IS for murdering a captive pilot.

The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday condemned "in the strongest terms" last week's killing of a Spanish peacekeeper in southern Lebanon and decided to set up a board of inquiry to investigate his death, a senior U.N. official said.

Wednesday's statement comes a week after Cpl. Francisco Javier Soria Toledo was killed during the Israeli military's exchange of fire with Hizbullah in a disputed border area.

The chief of the U.S.-led war on IS, General Lloyd Austin, condemned the pilot's murder as "savage" and vowed to "fight this barbaric enemy until it is defeated".

British Prime Minister David Cameron said the "sickening murder will only strengthen our resolve to defeat ISIL", another acronym for the group.

The Islamic State group released a video Tuesday purportedly showing a Jordanian pilot being burned alive in a cage, in the jihadists' most brutal execution yet of a foreign hostage.

The highly choreographed 22-minute video released online showed images of a man purported to be First Lieutenant Maaz al-Kassasbeh, captured in December, engulfed in flames.

Visiting Director of the Department of the Middle East and North Africa at the French Foreign Ministry Jean-François Girault kicked off on Tuesday a two-day official visit to Lebanon.

The French diplomat met for an hour with Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil at the Bustros Palace, in presence of Ambassador Patrice Paoli.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has criticized the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon just days after a Spanish peacekeeper was killed by what Madrid said was Israeli fire.

In a telephone call with U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon late on Sunday, Netanyahu charged that the U.N. force was failing to report on what Israel alleges is large-scale movement of weapons into south Lebanon by Hizbullah.

A blast ripped through a bus carrying Lebanese Shiite pilgrims in Damascus on Sunday, killing at least nine people, a monitor said, in an attack claimed by al-Qaida's Syrian branch.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 20 people were wounded in the explosion near Souq al-Hamadiyeh district, and that six of the dead were Lebanese citizens.

Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi on Friday asked the public prosecution to seek the arrest and penalization of those who opened fire in celebration of a much-anticipated speech by Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.

The celebratory gunshots and rocket-propelled grenades sparked panic and damaged cars and the facades of some buildings in the capital Beirut and its suburbs.