No written response has been prepared for U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein’s proposal and Lebanon will voice its remarks orally, Presidency sources said.

“We’re the ones who decide whether we will later submit a written response or not, seeing as this is a Lebanese decision and it is not for him to dictate on us what to do,” the sources added, in remarks to LBCI television.

The level of torture and sexual violence used by combatants against women and girls during the 15-year civil war in Lebanon shocked investigators, British newspaper The Guardian said.

A report by the human rights organization Legal Action Worldwide (LAW) gathered testimonies that detailed horrific experiences of violence, including gang-rape, electrocution and forced nudity used to persecute women and girls – some as young as nine – from opposing communities.

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat has urged an end to “overbidding and bickering in the sea border and oil rights file,” stressing that “the framework agreement that was launched by Speaker Nabih Berri is the only appropriate reference to approach our rights, based on the requirements of Lebanese national interest and according to Line 23.”

“Abiding by this agreement spares us from all the unnecessary explanation efforts,” Jumblat said in an interview with al-Joumhouria newspaper published Friday.

The search for a helicopter which disappeared in Italy with seven people on board, including four Lebanese, intensified Friday after the weather improved, a spokesman for the Alpine rescue service told AFP.

The helicopter was carrying a pilot and six passengers -- four Lebanese nationals and two Turks, according to Italian media reports.

General Security said Friday that the passport appointment platform will be re-activated as of Monday, June 13.

The platform had stopped working in April because of a shortage of travel documents, in part due to the government failing to pay a company tasked with printing new ones. Requests for passport renewals, ten times higher than in previous years, had piled pressure on passport centers and "affected available passport stocks."

Lebanon should block Israel from extracting gas from the disputed offshore field, Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said Thursday, warning a hydrocarbon exploration company hired by Israel against proceeding with its activities.

"The immediate objective should be to prevent the enemy from extracting oil and gas from the Karish gas field," part of which is claimed by Lebanon, Nasrallah said in a televised speech.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea has called for naming a new premier who is “non-corrupt” and who has a “sovereign identity.”

In an interview with the privately-owned al-Markazia news agency, Geagea also said that the new premier “should pledge not to reserve any portfolio for any party or sect, most importantly the energy portfolio.”

U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea held talks Thursday in the northern town of Bnashii with Marada Movement chief Suleiman Franjieh.

According to Franjieh’s press office, the talks tackled “the upcoming constitutional junctures and a number of important issues at the political, economic, financial and social levels.”

A study documenting at least 22,000 Israeli overflights in Lebanon’s skies over the past 15 years has revealed the “huge scale and impact of Israeli incursions over Lebanon” as well as the “psychological effect on the country,” British newspaper The Guardian reported on Thursday.

President Michel Aoun on Thursday stressed that he will seek “positive results” in the file of demarcating the maritime border with Israel, amid tensions sparked by the arrival of a gas production vessel in the Karish offshore field.

“The approach towards the file of the demarcation of the southern maritime border is based on preserving Lebanon’s interest as well as its rights to its water and land,” Aoun said in a Baabda meeting with the ambassadors of Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden.