French President Francois Hollande admitted to delivering weapons to Syrian rebels in 2012 despite an embargo, according to a new book coming out in France this month.

"We began when we were certain they would end up in the right hands. For the lethal weapons it was our services who delivered them," Hollande told author Xavier Panon in an interview in May last year.

Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq stressed on Wednesday that the real danger threatening Lebanon is a military operation carried out by a group other than the army, undermining the impact of a video circulated by al-Qaida-affiliate al-Nusra Front for the hostages in its captivity.

“The real danger of al-Qalamoun battle is its negative impact on the case of the hostage servicemen,” Mashnouq said in comments published in al-Joumhouria newspaper.

General Security chief Major General Abbas Ibrahim preferred to remain mum over accusations by al-Qaida-affiliate al-Nusra Front that he is procrastinating a deal with the group to release the captive servicemen.

“I will not allow the blood spill of abducted servicemen for any of reason,” Ibrahim said in comments published in An Nahar newspaper on Wednesday.

Al-Mustaqbal Movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri snapped back at Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah late Tuesday, accusing him of acting as the owner of Lebanese territories.

“Sayyed Hassan is dealing with the Lebanese border region in the South, East, Bekaa and the North as territories owned by Hizbullah, in which it moves as it wishes and buys and sells wars according to its will,” Hariri said in a tweet.

U.S. President Barack Obama met the head of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region at the White House on Tuesday, courting a vital ally on the frontline of the fight against Islamic militants.

Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met Massud Barzani to discuss the campaign to regain Iraqi territory lost to the Islamic State group.

The United States ratcheted up pressure on the leaders of the Islamic State jihadist group on Tuesday, adding four names to those targeted by multi-million-dollar bounties.

The IS group has seized a wide stretch of eastern Syria and northern Iraq and declared it a "caliphate," within which it has enslaved female captives, carried out sectarian massacres and murdered hostages.

One of the main hospitals in Syria's northern city of Aleppo has been forced to close indefinitely after being targeted by rockets and barrel bombs, a humanitarian group says.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Monday the private Al-Sakhour hospital, serving around 400,000 people as one of the only hospitals in east Aleppo, halted all activities after being bombed twice on consecutive days last week.

Mustaqbal Movement leader Saad Hariri warned on Tuesday from attempts by Hizbullah to drag Lebanon to turmoil in Syria by mobilizing for the battle in al-Qalamoun, accusing it of becoming a direct accomplice in killing the Syrian people.

“Neither Hizbullah nor the Iranian Revolutionary Guards nor the barrel bomb attack... will be able to protect Bashar Assad from falling, as logic says that history will not have mercy on a person responsible for the death of thousands,” Hariri said in a statement issued by his press office.

Progressive Socialist Party chief MP Walid Jumblat said on Tuesday that the Syrian regime took the failure to abolish political confessionalism in Lebanon as an excuse to remain in the country, adding the bombing that targeted MP Marwan Hamadeh was the first warning to ex-PM Rafik Hariri.

“The Taef Accord had called for abolishing the political sectarian system but this has not been achieved,” Jumblat told the Special Tribunal for Lebanon on the second day of his testimony.

Al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate al-Nusra Front claimed responsibility on Monday for a suicide attack hours earlier on a regime-controlled neighborhood in Damascus, the group said via Twitter.

A monitor said three regime forces were killed in the blast, along with three attackers, but a security official denied that any troops had died in the attack.