Iranian President Hassan Rouhani accused Saudi Arabia on Saturday of providing weapons and funding to terrorist groups in the Middle East, including Lebanon.

"What does providing financial assistance and weapons to terrorists in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq mean?" Rouhani asked.

The Lebanese drivers who have been stranded in Saudi Arabia as a result of the closure of the Nasib border crossing between Jordan and Syria have expressed their disappointment at the cabinet's failure to properly resolve their case, reported As Safir newspaper on Saturday.

They said that the recent cabinet decisions “did not meet their expectations in resolving their case.”

Two Syrian doctors urged Russian diplomats at the United Nations on Friday to put pressure on President Bashar al-Assad to allow life-saving medical supplies into a besieged city near Damascus.

The meeting came a day after the U.N. Security Council heard the two doctors give a detailed account of treating victims of chemical attacks last month in Idlib province.

A former Syrian army general who deserted in 2013 was found murdered in Lebanon near the border on Friday, with his family suspecting that Islamic State group jihadists killed him.

"General Yehya Zahra, who had deserted from the Syrian army, has been assassinated. His bullet-riddled body was found Friday near a refugee camp for Syrians at Arsal" near the border, a Lebanese security source told AFP.

The Islamic State group is now issuing photo identity cards in Syria's Raqa province, but only to males, along with a range of administrative documents, a monitor and activists said Friday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said IS had begun issuing "identity cards to those without proof of identity and boys over the age of 13 in Raqa province."

Syrian President Bashar Assad accused neighboring Turkey of torpedoing a U.N. plan for a ceasefire with rebels in the second city of Aleppo, in comments published on Friday.

Assad told the Swedish newspaper Expressen that Ankara had used its influence with rebel factions to persuade them to reject the proposals put forward by U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura for a ceasefire in the former commercial hub.

As armed groups in Syria and Iraq destroy priceless archaeological sites, European authorities and dealers are on high alert for smaller, looted artefacts put on sale to help finance the jihadists' war.

Stolen-art expert Chris Marinello, director of Art Recovery International, said he has been shown photographs of items being offered from Syria that were "clearly looted right out of the ground".

Negotiations with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) reached a dead end after the group placed tough conditions to release the servicemen in its captivity, media reports said on Friday.

According to al-Mustaqbal newspaper, ISIL links the release of the hostages to the operation carried out by the Lebanese army on Lebanon's eastern border with Syria.

Delegates from Libya's rival parliaments gathered in Morocco Thursday for what U.N. mediators demanded be a "final" push for a unity government to stem mounting jihadism and a desperate exodus of asylum-seekers.

Rival governments have battled for power in the North African country since last August and just Wednesday an air strike blamed on the internationally recognised administration hit an air base controlled by its opponent.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea considered on Thursday that the Lebanese state is fragmented, expressing belief that the Saudi-led Arab coalition will head to Syria after the crisis in Yemen ends.

“The state is incomplete and will never rise amid the absence of the strategic and security decision in it,” Geagea reiterated in an interview with the Egyptian newspaper el-Yom el-Sabe.