Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq on Friday said Israel was involved in a car bomb blast that targeted an official of the Palestinian movement Hamas in southern Lebanon earlier this month. 

Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil snapped back Friday at Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil, accusing him of resorting to sectarian incitement for political gains.

“Someone is trying to use big slogans to cover up for the nature of his real practices in governance, administrations, the state, the political system and everything that has to do with the affairs of this state,” Khalil said at a press conference he held a few hours after a press conference by Bassil.

Hizbullah deputy chief Sheikh Naim Qassem announced Friday that his party and its allies are not seeking to win a parliamentary majority or a one-third veto power in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

“We in Hizbullah are relieved in advance regarding any parliamentary elections results and we're not worried at all,” Qassem said at a press conference to launch Hizbullah's electoral campaign in the South.

Hundreds of Kurds living in Lebanon gathered outside the Turkish embassy in Lebanon on Friday to protest Turkey's ongoing military operation in northern Syria's Kurdish-controlled Afrin region.

Protesters carrying Kurdish flags chanted slogans denouncing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, including: "Down with Erdogan!"

Free Patriotic Movement chief and Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil announced Friday that he “has been defeated for the third time,” as a ministerial panel tasked with studying the implementation of the new electoral law said there is no time left to introduce any amendments.

“I have been defeated for the third time, and the Lebanese have lost the reforms with me,” said Bassil after the meeting.

Justice Minister Salim Jreissati stressed Friday that he did not move the public prosecution against the comedian Hisham Haddad, the host of 'Lahonwbas', the National News Agency reported.

Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil called for “abolishing sectarianism” and stressed that Lebanon can only be governed with “partnership” among its political parties.

“Lebanon can not survive with multiple (political) bi-polarities. Lebanon can only survive with Christian-Muslim partnership,” stressed Bassil in a televised press interview on Friday.

To bird lovers, the scenes are upsetting. Dozens of dead buzzards lie on a carpet of feathers on a rocky hill in northern Lebanon. Hunters pose with their catch — scores of calandra larks, known for their melodious birdsong, arranged neatly on the hoods of their Land Rovers.

Great white pelicans, protected both in Europe and Lebanon, soar overhead, then with a crack of rifle fire, tumble down into the shrubs below.

Differences between the AMAL Movement, of Speaker Nabih Berri, and the Free Patriotic Movement, of President Michel Aoun, over the signing of a seniority decree promoting a number of officers “do not annul the possibility of striking an alliance with the FPM,” al-Akhbar daily reported on Friday.

The daily quoted AMAL sources who said: “The battle over seniority decree between the President and Speaker is one thing, while the electoral alliance is another. The possibility of striking a coalition with the FPM is not rejected in principle, but it is however subject to calculations of profit and loss.”

Preparations for Lebanon's upcoming parliamentary elections are underway despite the fact that the “map of alliances” is still vague and highly controversial except for the “Shiite duo” of Hizbullah and the AMAL Movement, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Friday.