At least three people were killed early on Friday when a bus and a truck collided in the northern region of Akkar.

The horrific accident also wounded 28 others.

Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq has vowed to protect the country's places of worship after an alleged threat by extremists to attack churches.

Al-Mashnouq rejected such threats, saying “we are keen on protecting every inch of the nation's land.”

The ongoing division between the two Higher Islamic Council escalated after the body led by deputy Grand Mufti Omar Misqawi filed a lawsuit against the members of the council headed by Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani.

According to As Safir newspaper published on Friday, the three-year war between the two councils reached a new level after Misqawi filed a lawsuit against the members who have an “illegal status.”

Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea has accused his rival Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun of deceiving the public and creating a media stir to win the backing of the rival Lebanese parties for the country's top Christian post.

“Aoun hasn't proposed a serious initiative. He made a media stir to pressure the Lebanese parties into electing him a president,” Geagea told al-Joumhouria daily in an interview published on Friday.

Syrian refugees will constitute more than a third of Lebanon's population by the end of 2014, the United Nations said Thursday, warning of an increasingly unsustainable burden to the economy.

A report released in Beirut said the number of refugees will be 1.5 million by December, or a third of the country's population of four million.

The cabinet failed on Thursday in resolving the pending disputes linked to granting Lebanese University teachers full-time employment, prompting Education Minister Elias Bou Saab to issue a warning over the fate of the institution and its students.

The minister warned: “The fate of the university and its students will be in danger if this issue is not settled.”

A hand grenade was hurled Thursday near a bakery in the northern city of Tripoli, in the second such attack in two days.

LBCI television said the explosive device targeted a popular Manakish bakery on the Ezzeddine Street.

The army carried out more raids in the northern Akkar region of Fnaideq following similar operations it carried out last week, it announced in a statement on Thursday.

The Army Command said that the military discovered explosives belts and explosives in an agricultural field in the region.

The spiraling refugee crisis from Syria's civil war could pose a serious threat to Lebanon's security and destabilize the entire region unless donors quickly provide the unfunded 70 percent of the $3.74 billion needed for emergency needs, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said Thursday.

The estimate of how much money will be needed is based on an upwardly revised assessment that Guterres plans to formally present on Friday. It includes a new estimate there will be at least 3.6 million Syrian refugees in the region by the end of the year.

Military Examining Magistrate Imad al-Zein demanded on Thursday the death penalty for a Syrian female for the possession of detonators and handing them over to another compatriot, the state-run National News Agency reported.

The NNA said that al-Zein issued his verdict against Syrian national, identified as Samia Sh., for the possession of detonators and delivering them to another, who is yet to be identified.