Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said on Saturday that Syria's new rulers, who ousted the Lebanese armed group's ally Bashar al-Assad, should not recognize neighboring Israel or establish ties with it.

"We hope that this new party in power will see Israel as an enemy and not normalize relations with it," Qassem said in a televised speech, his first public remarks since Islamist-led rebels toppled Assad following an offensive launched on November 27, the same day that a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took effect.

Ukraine said on Saturday it had attacked an oil terminal in the western Russian region of Oryol overnight, sparking a fire.

The governor of Oryol said on Telegram that fuel had caught fire at "a facility" in the region after a "massive drone attack".

A Syria war monitor said Israel launched strikes early Saturday targeting military sites in Damascus and its countryside, in the latest such raids since rebels brought down Bashar al-Assad almost a week ago.

"Israeli strikes destroyed a scientific institute" and other related military facilities in Barzeh, in northern Damascus, and targeted a "military airport" in the capital's countryside, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday in Baghdad that Washington was committed to Iraq's security and would help prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State group following Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad's overthrow.

Blinken, speaking after talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, said he reaffirmed "our commitment to working with Iraq on security and always working for Iraq's sovereignty, to make sure that that is strengthened and preserved".

President Emmanuel Macron on Friday named centrist leader Francois Bayrou as his new prime minister, the presidency said, handing him the task of hauling France out of months of political crisis.

Bayrou, head of the MoDem group that is allied to Macron's party, was appointed nine days after Michel Barnier's government was ousted by parliament in a historic no-confidence vote.

King Hamad has told Syrian rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani that Bahrain is ready to cooperate with the new authorities, the official BNA news agency reported Friday.

It said that in a letter addressed to Jolani using his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, the monarch said Bahrain, current Arab summit president, was ready to "continue consultations and coordination with Syria".

With the overthrow of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, many in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights say they want peace and a return to Syrian control.

Kamil Khater, a barber in the Druze Arab town of Majdal Shams, said: "We, the Syrians... want peace with everyone, including Israel."

Thousands of Syrians converged at the landmark Umayyad Mosque in Damascus ahead of Friday prayers where the leader of the Islamist rebels who seized power last week is expected, AFP correspondents reported.

Men, women and children flocked to the mosque, an unusual sight in Damascus, with some raising the Syrian independence flag, used by the opposition since the 2011 uprising. Some chanted: "one, one, one, the Syrian people is one," the correspondents said.

Jordan will host a Syria crisis summit over the weekend with participation of foreign ministers from numerous Western and Arab nations, Amman’s foreign ministry announced Thursday.

The Saturday summit "to discuss developments in Syria" will include top diplomats from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar, who will also convene with their Turkish and U.S. counterparts, the EU’s foreign policy chief and the U.N. envoy for Syria, the statement said.

The United Nations humanitarian agency said Thursday that more than a million people, mostly women and children, had been newly displaced in Syria since rebels launched an offensive ousting President Bashar al-Assad.

"As of 12 December, 1.1 million people have been newly displaced across the country since the start of the escalation of hostilities on 27 November. The majority are women and children," the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement.