Iran's parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, will travel to Lebanon for the funeral of long-time Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Sunday, Iranian media reported.

Tens of thousands of people are expected to turn out in Beirut to farewell the Iran-backed group's leader.

The British Museum said Friday it had chosen French-Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh to redesign a third of the venue's gallery space -- including a section housing the disputed Parthenon Marbles.

The museum, one of London's biggest tourist draws, received more than 60 entries after launching a competition last year for a remodeling of its Western Range galleries.

A Lebanese-American man has been found guilty of attempting to kill novelist Salman Rushdie when storming a stage and repeatedly plunging a knife into the "Satanic Verses" author.

Hadi Matar faces up to 25 years in prison and will be sentenced in April after being convicted of attempted murder and assault charges over the 2022 attack.

Hamas rejected on Friday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "threats" to make the Palestinian Islamist group pay after he accused it of violating the ceasefire by not returning the hostage Shiri Bibas.

"We reject the threats issued by Benjamin Netanyahu as part of his attempts to improve his image," Hamas said in a statement and called on Israeli authorities to return the body of a Gazan woman that the group had handed over on Thursday, claiming it was that of Bibas.

Israel will free 602 inmates from jails on Saturday as part of a hostage-prisoner swap with Hamas under an ongoing Gaza ceasefire deal, according to the Palestinian Prisoners' Club advocacy group.

Hamas's armed wing confirmed it will hand over Saturday six hostages held alive in the Gaza Strip as part of the ongoing ceasefire deal with Israel.

The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement on Friday that the release would occur as planned. Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum published the names of the six hostages earlier this week, naming them as Eliya Cohen, Tal Shoham, Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert, Hisham Al-Sayed and Avera Mengistu.

A French court on Thursday postponed a much-awaited decision on freeing pro-Palestinian Lebanese militant Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, jailed 40 years ago for the 1982 killings of two foreign diplomats.

The Paris appeals court, which had been scheduled to deliver its verdict on Thursday, said it needed more time and would now revisit the case on June 19.

Israel said Friday it struck crossings on the Lebanon-Syria border used by Hezbollah to smuggle weapons, with a Syria war monitor reporting an unspecified number of people wounded in the attack.

The Israeli military said its air forces "struck crossing points in the area of the Lebanon-Syria border" used by Hezbollah "in attempts to smuggle weapons into Lebanese territory".

A visiting EU official said Friday that disbursing half a billion euros in funding to Lebanon was conditional on a banking sector restructure and reaching an agreement with the International Monetary Fund.

In May last year, the European Union announced one billion euros ($1 billion) in aid for Lebanon to help stem irregular migration to the bloc, with the assistance designed to strengthen basic services including education and health amid a severe economic crisis.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday ordered an "intensive operation against centers of terrorism" in the occupied West Bank, his office said, after three buses exploded in central Israel without causing any reported injuries.