The U.S. Embassy in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, said 70 howitzers, nearly 26 million rounds of ammunition and artillery of various sizes were delivered by merchant ship at Beirut port on Sunday.

"Today's shipment, from the generosity of the American people, is valued at over $25 million," Ambassador David Hale said. "Lebanon is now the fifth largest recipient in the world of U.S. military foreign assistance -- over $100 million last year, and over $1 billion in the last 8 years.

"We are fighting the same enemy, so our support for you has been swift and continuous. I am confident that, with the right equipment, Lebanon's soldiers can defend Lebanon successfully."

The artillery is to help Lebanon combat terrorist and extremist threats from neighboring Syria, where ISIS terrorists make their headquarters and where a variety of insurgent groups operate.

Syria regime air strikes kill 15 near Damascus: monitor
Beirut (AFP) Feb 9, 2015 - At least 15 people were killed and dozens wounded on Monday in government air strikes on an area outside the capital Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.

There were no immediate details on the breakdown of those killed in the strikes, which are the latest to hit the town of Douma in the rebel stronghold of Eastern Ghouta.

At a field clinic in the area, an AFP photographer saw a girl in a purple headscarf and another child in a woolly hat crying as doctors treated the wounded, among them a young boy.

His eyes stared wide in apparent shock from a face streaked with blood and white dust. His arm was bandaged and attached to a rudimentary drip.

In the streets outside, locals picked through rubble, carrying the wounded to the clinic, while a civil defence worker trained a hose on a fire set by the strikes.

The opposition bastion, east of Damascus, was still reeling from a massive government aerial assault on Thursday that came after rebels fired more than 120 rockets and mortar rounds into the capital.

The rebel barrage killed 10 people in Damascus, including a child, while the government air strikes and surface-to-surface missiles fired at Eastern Ghouta killed at least 82 people, among them 18 children.

Eastern Ghouta has been under government siege for nearly two years as the army tries to break the rebel hold over the area.

The siege has created medical and food shortages, exacerbating dire humanitarian needs created by regular government bombardment of the area.

More than 210,000 people have been killed in Syria since the beginning of the country's conflict in March 2011.