The United States announced Tuesday it will provide an additional $125 million (110 million euros) in emergency food aid for Syrians affected by the civil war.

The U.S. State Department's Kelly Clements said the money will go to the U.N. World Food Program, which feeds nearly six million Syrians inside and outside the country every month.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat hit back on Tuesday at Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who said that people should not differentiate between the extremist al-Nusra Front and Islamic State groups.

He said via Twitter: “As long as there remains a single Syrian fighting the terrorist regime of Bashar Assad, then I support that Syrian.”

Syrian government troops began a new offensive around Aleppo on Tuesday, seeking to encircle rebels in the northern city and break the siege on two pro-regime villages.

The offensive comes the same day that U.N. peace envoy Staffan de Mistura is to address the Security Council on his efforts, including a plan to "freeze" fighting in Aleppo that has so far failed to gain traction.

Japan on Tuesday announced $15.5 million to fight "terrorism" in the Middle East and Africa, as Tokyo tries to demonstrate its resolve despite the murder of two citizens by Islamist extremists.

The amount doubles the $7.5 million in assistance that Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida pledged during a visit to Brussels in January.

The Qaida-linked Abdullah Azzam Brigades warned the Lebanese security agencies from continuing their war against Sunnis in Lebanon and detaining their youth, considering the apparatuses a direct enemy.

“Any Lebanese security agency that participates in oppressing the Sunnis in Lebanon and Syria will be our direct enemy,” the brigades said in a statement under the title “a message to the Lebanese people, government and army - 2.”

The chaos in Libya since Moammar Gadhafi's downfall has proven fertile ground for the Islamic State group, prompting increasing calls for foreign intervention to uproot the jihadists.

In a video released Sunday, IS said it beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians on a Libyan beach, in a likely bid to strike fear and show the Sunni extremists' reach now stretches beyond its Iraqi and Syrian strongholds.

Nine people, including three children, were killed Monday in rebel fire on a government-held neighborhood in Syria's northern city of Aleppo, Syria's state news agency SANA said.

It said they were killed in Hay al-Seryan, in government-controlled west Aleppo, but gave no further details.

Syrian refugees make up the majority of children living and working on the streets of Lebanon, with many of them illiterate and surviving by begging, a study released Monday said.

The survey of 18 areas in Lebanon identified more than 1,500 children living and working on the street, although its authors said the real number nationwide could be three times higher.

Progressive Socialist Party chief MP Walid Jumblat has said it was important for Hizbullah and al-Mustaqbal movement to stick to their dialogue to resolve several issues.

“What's important is for the dialogue between al-Mustaqbal and Hizbullah to continue,” said Jumblat in remarks published in As Safir daily on Monday.

Police have thwarted a plot to kill former pro-Syrian Information Minister Michel Samaha who has been indicted in a series of terrorist plots, security sources said Monday.

The sources told al-Joumhouria newspaper that the military prosecutor had recently granted Samaha the right to be transferred to hospital for medical reasons.