Artillery and rocket shelling from the Syrian side of the border targeted on Friday several villages in the northern district of Akkar, the state-run National News Agency reported.

According to the news agency, 14 rockets landed on the outskirts of the villages of Mashta Hammoud, al-Abboudiyeh, Hakr Janin, al-Arma, Qbour al-Beed in Akkar.

A security document is making the rounds that a Syrian suicide bomber driving an explosives-laden Kia is plotting to target a high-ranking personality in the northern city of Tripoli or in the capital Beirut.

The document claims that the bomber identified as Abou al-Adnan is a member of the Khaled Ibn al-Walid al-Jabha al-Islamiya Brigades.

Syrians who trade in captagon have moved their businesses to Lebanon as they are using the country as a major transit route to smuggle the narcotic pills mainly to the Gulf, al-Joumhouria newspaper reported on Friday.

According to the report, the Syrian traders are using chocolate-producing machines to produce narcotic pills, which manufactures around 700 captagon pills per minute.

Prime Minister-designate Tammam Salam has lamented that the cabinet crisis has been further deadlocked by the conditions set by Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun.

In remarks to several local dailies published on Friday, officials close to Salam said: “There was no particular political activity yesterday.”

Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino will kick off an official visit to Lebanon at the beginning of next week for talks with senior officials, al-Joumhouria newspaper reported on Friday.

According to the daily, the visit will discuss Italian Premier Enrico Letta's recent visit to Lebanon, who stressed the need for a strong support for Lebanon to consolidate its stability.

Mohammed Hussein has stacked 300 sandbags outside his coffee shop in Beirut's southern suburbs to reassure customers frightened by a wave of deadly bombings there, but business is still down by half.

The once-bustling Shiite suburb's streets are quiet and its residents on high alert after a series of six blasts, the first of which was in July, killed at least 57 people. They are blamed on Sunni radicals, retaliating against Hizbullah for sending its troops to fight in Syria's civil war by attacking the Lebanese Shiite party's base of support.

Caretaker Justice Minister Shakib Qortbawi referred on Thursday the optional civil marriage draft law to the cabinet.

"If the law is put into effect, then civil marriage becomes applicable as an optional law in Lebanon,” Qortbawi told LBCI television.

The sub-security council of the South held Thursday an extraordinary meeting in Sidon and announced a plan to combat “rumors” about the presence of booby-trapped cars in certain locations, after a media report said the council would convene to discuss “an urgent security issue.”

State-run National News Agency confirmed the “extraordinary” nature of the meeting, saying it was headed by acting South Lebanon Governor Nicola Abu Daher.

The Army Command announced on Thursday that detained cleric Sheikh Omar al-Atrash had confessed during investigations to taking part in plans to carry out car bomb attacks in Lebanon.

It said in a statement that he confessed to transporting explosives-laden cars to Beirut.

One person was killed and another injured on Thursday when they came under Syrian gunfire while they were on the Lebanese side of al-Kabir river in the northern area of Wadi Khaled.

The state-run National News Agency said the two Syrians came under attack by automatic rifles.