Premier Najib Miqati returned to Beirut on Sunday, a day earlier than schedule, to contain the tension in the northern port city of Tripoli that has left at least three people dead.

Upon his return from a two-day official visit to Paris, Miqati held a telephone conversation with Speaker Nabih Berri and informed him that he came to Beirut a day earlier to end the “abnormal situation” in the capital of the North.

The Presidency and the Foreign Ministry received a letter from United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon inquiring if Lebanon had any comments on the renewal of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon cooperation protocol, local newspapers reported on Monday.

Ban revealed that he is willing to renew the court’s mandate for further three years, An Nahar newspaper reported.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun on Sunday stressed that his ministers “will not leave the government.”

“Let the premier quit” instead, Aoun said in an interview on Al-Jadeed television.

The Syrian community in Lebanon on Sunday staged a demonstration outside the Chinese embassy in the Beirut district of Bir Hassan to hail Beijing's veto at the Security Council that blocked U.N. action against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Carrying Syrian flags and portraits of Assad, the demonstrators shouted slogans in support of the Syrian leader and denounced a number of Western and Arab countries critical of the Assad government.

Head of the Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc, ex-PM Fouad Saniora, on Sunday strongly condemned the latest deadly clashes in the northern city of Tripoli, stressing that the Mustaqbal Movement rejects “any act that could lead to unrest or a civil strife among the Lebanese, from whichever side it comes.”

Hitting back at those accusing Mustaqbal of arming itself, Saniora said “those voicing these remarks are trying to justify their armament and possession of arms,” noting that the movement is “against any form of armament” and that it wants the state to be in full control of security in the country.

Hizbullah deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem on Sunday hailed the army for “protecting the Lebanese border” and rejected alleged efforts to transform Lebanon into a launchpad for settling political scores.

During a ceremony held in the Ghobeiri neighborhood of Beirut’s southern suburbs, Qassem “saluted the Lebanese army that is safeguarding the Lebanese border, particularly in the northern areas.”

Major-General Paolo Serra, Commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), on Sunday stressed that U.N. peacekeepers will continue to fully cooperate with the Lebanese army and the local authorities, calling on everyone to benefit from the calm the South has been enjoying.

Serra noted that the past five years were the calmest for southern Lebanon.

A Syrian kidnapped in the Bekaa town of Taanayel was set free at dawn Sunday for the purpose of providing the abductees with a ransom in return for the release of his two brothers and their employee, the National News Agency reported.

The four men - brothers Osama, Imad and Hisham Abdul Raouf and their employee Khaled al-Hamadeh - were kidnapped at gunpoint in Taanayel on Saturday night as they were heading to the Masnaa border crossing following a two-day visit to Lebanon.

Several residents of Tyre blocked on Sunday the road at the southern coastal city’s entrance to protest electricity cuts but the army later reopened it, the National News Agency reported.

NNA said the residents held a sit-in outside the Electricite du Liban building at the city’s northern entrance and hoisted banners against “the policy of rationing and corruption at the energy ministry.”

Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri voiced his support for Syria's uprising and urged Muslims in several countries, including Lebanon, to come to the aid of Syrian rebels confronting President Bashar Assad's forces.

"I appeal to every Muslim and every free, honorable one in Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon, to rise to help his brothers in Syria with all that he can," Zawahiri said in a new video message released on jihadist Internet forums, U.S. monitors SITE Intelligence said on Sunday.