Russia's Foreign Ministry on Wednesday said an attack on Lebanese group Hezbollah and others using exploding pagers was an act of hybrid war against Lebanon in which thousands of innocent people had been hurt.
A senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters that Israel's Mossad spy agency planted explosives inside 5,000 pagers imported by Lebanese group Hezbollah months before Tuesday's detonations.
The attack saw thousands of pagers detonate across Lebanon, killing nine people and wounding nearly 3,000 others, including the group's fighters and Iran's envoy to Beirut.
Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said in a statement: "We regard what happened as yet another act of hybrid warfare against Lebanon, which has harmed thousands of innocent people.
"It appears that the organisers of this high-tech attack deliberately sought to foment a large-scale armed confrontation in order to provoke a major war in the Middle East."
Hamas handed over three Israeli hostages on Saturday, whose emaciated appearance shocked Israelis following their release on live TV, in the latest stage of a ceasefire deal aimed at ending the 15-month war in Gaza.
The US Coast Guard in Alaska found the wreckage of a small plane atop frozen sea ice on Friday, after the aircraft suddenly lost altitude on Thursday and the crash killed all 10 people on board, officials said.
A US judge has temporarily allowed roughly 2,700 US Agency for International Development employees put on leave by President Donald Trump's administration to go back to work, pausing aspects of a plan to dismantle the agency.
Hamas accused Israel of multiple breaches of their ceasefire agreement on Friday, a day before the scheduled exchange of three more Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners in the latest stage in a fragile deal aimed at ending the war in Gaza.