Almost 170 Lebanese villages and towns will go into lockdown for the next week, the Interior Ministry said on Sunday, as Lebanon grapples with record numbers of novel coronavirus cases.

The Ministry also ordered bars, pubs and nightclubs nationwide closed "until further notice."

The Lebanese Forces-led Strong Republic parliamentary bloc will convene Wednesday to take the “appropriate stance” as to the binding parliamentary consultations that will be held Thursday to name a new PM, media reports said.

A senior Free Patriotic Movement official on Sunday lashed out at ex-PM Saad Hariri in remarks to LBCI television.

Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri visited Sunday morning the site of the fuel tank explosion that occurred Friday in Tariq al-Jedideh, which resulted in three deaths and many injuries among residents.

Fires that ravaged parts of Lebanon and Syria in recent days have been brought under control, authorities in the two countries said on Sunday.

At the quest of President Michel Aoun, Army chief General Joseph Aoun held a meeting on Saturday with the Lebanese delegation tasked with “indirect” negotiations with Israel on delineating the maritime border, the Army Command-Orientation Directorate reported.

Caretaker Minister of Justice, Marie-Claude Najem reportedly inquired ambassadors of foreign countries that aided the probe into the colossal port explosion, about the “findings they reached so far to expedite the course of investigations,” al-Joumhouria daily reported on Saturday.

Army helicopters began early on Saturday to suppress wildfires that have been raging for more than 36 hours in the outskirts of Akkar, the state-run National News Agency reported.

One person was killed in an explosion of a gas canister inside a building in the Beirut district of Ashrafieh on Saturday, hours after an explosion at a Bakery killed four in the neighborhood of Tariq el-Jedideh.

A powerful explosion rocked Beirut’s Tariq al-Jedideh district on Friday evening, sending plumes of smoke.