Syria's air force on Thursday carried out fresh strikes on areas on the outskirts of the northeastern border town of Arsal.

Voice of Lebanon radio (93.3) said Syrian warplanes carried out eight raids in two stages on Khirbet Younin on the outskirts of Arsal at noon, targeting Syrian opposition fighters.

The Lebanese army reopened on Wednesday the Labweh-Arsal road in the eastern Bekaa Valley and sent reinforcements to Arsal, a Sunni border town blamed for rocket fire on Shiite areas, to deploy on its outskirts.

OTV said the military carried out patrols in the town on Wednesday morning.

Demonstrators blocked several key roads throughout the country on Tuesday to protest the continued closure of the only route leading from and to the border town of Arsal by residents of neighboring al-Labweh.

In the Bekaa, “a number of individuals blocked the al-Masnaa road in solidarity with Arsal,” al-Jadeed television reported.

A bomb along the Syria-Israel frontier in the occupied Golan Heights on Tuesday wounded four Israeli soldiers, the Israeli army said, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Israel would act "forcefully."

The army said in a statement that "an explosive device was detonated against IDF (Israeli military) soldiers patrolling the Israeli-Syrian border," adding that several soldiers were wounded in the attack.

The government of the Marshall Islands on Tuesday defeated a motion of no confidence brought after it nominated Lebanon's former General Security chief Maj. Gen. Jamil al-Sayyed as its ambassador to UNESCO.

The motion from opposition leaders in the Pacific nation's parliament was defeated by 17 votes to 13 after more than four hours of acrimonious debate.

U.S. agents have said they arrested a Detroit-area man before he could fly to the Middle East to fight Syrian rebels.

Twenty-two-year-old Mohammad Hamdan is charged with breaking a law that prohibits support for terrorist organizations, they said.

The Syrian army and Hizbullah seized full control of the rebel bastion Yabrud on Sunday, dealing the opposition a heavy symbolic and strategic blow in the Qalamoun region adjoining the Lebanese border.

An Agence France Presse reporter entered the town and said the Syrian army took total control of it after a fierce 48-hour-battle with rebels.

Israeli soldiers opened fire Saturday at "suspects" who approached the border with Lebanon, a military spokeswoman said.

"A certain number of suspects approached the Israel-Lebanon border. Soldiers fired in the air to warn them away, and they moved off," she said.

The cabinet on Friday endorsed its policy statement during a session that was delayed for more than three hours for strenuous consultations, as the three ministers of the Phalange Party and Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi voiced reservations over the clause related to resistance against Israel.

“The cabinet has endorsed the policy statement amid the reservations of the ministers of the Phalange Party Sejaan Qazzi (Labor), Ramzi Jreij (Information) and Alain Hakim (Economy), in addition to Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi,” state-run National News Agency reported.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, who led the regime's negotiating team at failed peace talks this year, underwent a successful heart operation in Lebanon on Friday, Syrian television reported.

Muallem, the chief diplomat of President Bashar Assad's regime throughout the three-year civil war, had undergone tests for a suspected blocked coronary artery, a medical source in the Lebanese capital told Agence France Presse.