Celebratory gunfire rang out in Beirut to mark the start of a ceasefire between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah to end almost 14 months of fighting.

The cleric takes over after Israel killed Hezbollah's longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in an airstrike in a Beirut suburb in late September.

The Middle East is bracing for a wider war as Israel fights in Gaza and Lebanon, and promises a strong response to Iran's missile strikes.

Israeli commandos are currently conducting a raid inside southern Lebanon, and there are indications that Israel may send more forces into the area, a senior U.S. official told NPR.

In a fiery speech at the United Nations General Assembly, the Israeli prime minister said his country would is "winning" and would attack Iran and its proxies anywhere in the Middle East.

“The situation is really quite volatile,” Capt. Alessandro Crepy, with the Italian contingent of the peacekeeping group UNIFIL, says of the fighting between forces in Israel and Lebanon.

China's charting its own course, distancing itself from the U.S. in the Middle East, refusing to condemn the Houthis and looking to capitalize on ties with regional players to help solve the crisis.

A U.S. drone strike in the Iraqi capital has killed at least one leader of an Iran-backed militia, Kataib Hezbollah.

Pakistan and Iran have traded cross-border rocket attacks, stoking fears of widening conflict even farther.