Suheil Hamwi spent 32 years in a Syrian prison, and now, after an offensive by insurgents that toppled the government of Bashar Assad, he's finally returned to his home in Lebanon.

In 1992, Hamwi worked as a merchant, selling various goods in the town of Chekka in northern Lebanon. On the night of Eid il-Burbara, or Saint Barbara's Day — a holiday similar to Halloween — a man came to his door to buy some whiskey. Hamwi said he handed his 10-month-old son, George, to his wife and went to his car to fetch the whiskey and make the sale.

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil warned Tuesday that “fear of the departure of a secular regime and the takeover of religious and ideological groups will threaten the presence of minorities in Syria and scare them to the extent of immigrating and leaving their land.”

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati’s press office commented Tuesday on reports saying some former Syrian regime officials have entered Lebanon or used its territory to travel to other countries.

Hezbollah MP Hassan Ezzeddine on Tuesday accused Israel of “seeking to undermine the ceasefire agreement through its violations.”

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi, who attended this weekend the reponing of Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral, briefly discussed on the sidelines of the ceremonies, the presidential impasse with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Al-Rahi told a group of journalists in Paris that Macron had expressed France's keenness to help Lebanon, including in filling its presidential void. He said that Macron had told him that "Lebanon is and will remain" in his heart.

The developments in Syria have pushed Lebanon’s political forces to intensify their efforts to secure the election of a new president in the electoral session that Speaker Nabih Berri has scheduled for January 9, al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Lebanon will form a crisis committee to search for and identify missing and forcibly disappeared persons in Syrian prisons.

Under the request of caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, Cabinet Secretary-General Judge Mahmoud Makiya sent Monday a letter to the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Social Affairs asking them to urgently coordinate with the National Commission for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared Persons in Lebanon and with the relevant authorities to identify, document, and facilitate the return of Lebanese detainees freed from Syrian prisons.

The U.S. government's top hostage negotiator is in Beirut in hopes of collecting information on the whereabouts of Austin Tice, an American journalist missing in Syria for 12 years, the State Department said.

Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, is talking to officials in the region following the overthrow of Bashar Assad's government to find out where Tice is and "get him home as soon as possible," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters Monday.

A monitor of Syria's war said Tuesday it had recorded more than 300 Israeli strikes since rebels toppled the country's longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad over the weekend.

"The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has been able to document around 310 strikes" carried out by "Israeli warplanes" since the announcement of the fall of Assad on Sunday morning, the monitor said, while AFP journalists in the capital reported hearing loud explosions early Tuesday.

A Lebanese man who had spent 33 years in Syrian prisons arrived Monday in his hometown Chekka, after being freed by Islamist-led rebels.

Salim Hamawi is the first Lebanese prisoner to return to Lebanon, but another man, Ali al-Ali, was filmed after being freed from a prison in Hama last week.