Five French soldiers and two civilians were wounded on Friday by a powerful roadside bomb that targeted a UNIFIL patrol in the southern coastal city of Tyre, a spokesperson and media reports said.

UNIFIL spokesman Andrea Tenenti said the 5 peacekeepers were injured when an explosion targeted their patrol in an area south of Tyre around 9:30 am. He did not specify to which contingent they belonged to.

United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon will discuss with senior Lebanese officials during his upcoming visit to Beirut the cooperation protocol of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon that is opposed by the majority of the cabinet members.

The protocol expires in March.

President Michel Suleiman on Friday slammed the “terrorist attack” on the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, saying its objective is to drive the peacekeepers out of the country.

At a joint press conference with his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sarkisian in Yerevan, Suleiman said: “France, which has made huge sacrifices for Lebanon, will not succumb to these terrorist activities.”

The General Labor Confederation’s executive council will meet on Friday to decide on the measures that will be taken to overturn the cabinet’s approval of a wage boost.

“The cabinet’s decision was more unfair than the previous one,” head of the GLC Ghassan Ghosn told As Safir newspaper about a decision reached by the government in mid-October that was turned down by the Shura Council for being unfair.

Speaker Nabih Berri and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman, who was on a two-day official visit to Beirut, have reportedly disagreed on the situation in Syria as the top diplomat sought to garner Lebanese support against the Assad regime.

Sources close to Berri told An Nahar daily published Friday that the Syrian crisis was at the helm of Feltman’s discussions with Lebanese officials.

Hizbullah’s education office slammed the cabinet’s wage boost decree as it voiced its support to the Syndicate Coordination Committee call for strike.

“The cabinet’s (wage hike decree) is offensive and unfair and doesn’t reflect any seriousness in dealing with the issue,” Hizbullah’s education office said in a statement on Thursday.

Sources close to Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat have said that U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman encouraged the PSP chief on his call for National Dialogue to resolve controversial issues.

Feltman met with Jumblat in Clemenceau on Thursday. The PSP’s press office said the Druze chief stressed the importance of dialogue as the only way to resolve differences and end the current crisis.

Labor Minister Charbel Nahhas on Thursday said that the cabinet’s rejection on Wednesday of his wage increase plan was “purely political,” describing the Change and Reform bloc’s partners in the government as “an octopus seeking … to defend its personal interests.”

“Yesterday’s decision to reject our plan was purely political because it sided with the approach of counting on outside forces and appeasing certain parties and ambassadors,” Nahhas told OTV.

Lebanese Democratic Party leader MP Talal Arslan, accompanied by a religious Druze delegation, on Thursday held talks in Damascus with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Addressing the Lebanese delegation, Assad said that “Syria is strong thanks to its people and the support of the brotherly and friendly people,” according to Syria’s state news agency SANA, stressing that “Syria is capable of overcoming the current events and that it won't ever give up its stances, principles and sovereignty whatever the pressures may be.”

Speaker Nabih Berri has stressed that the U.N.-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon “should have followed the constitutional path in Lebanon,” noting that “no one would have opposed it in that case.”

In an interview with Al-Afkar weekly to be published Friday, Berri emphasized that the court “is still unconstitutional because neither the president nor the parliament have ratified it.”