Nine US warships carrying 17,000 personnel entered the Gulf on Wednesday in a show of force off Iran’s coast that navy officials said was the largest daytime assembly of ships since the 2003 Iraq war.

An bomb in a suitcase has ripped through a building in the town of Aley, in the mountains east of the Lebanese capital. A senior security official said five people had been wounded in the explosion which was at the main roundabout of the resort on Wednesday evening.

A roadside bomb in northwestern Afghanistan has killed a Finnish solder and wounded four Norwegians, military officials say.