Four Albanian children held in a camp housing families of jihadists in northeastern Syria are on their way to Lebanon ahead of repatriation, the Red Crescent said Monday.

The children were headed for "Damascus then... the Lebanese border, and from Lebanon, they will go to Albania," Rahaf Aboud, a spokeswoman for the Syrian Red Crescent, told AFP.

Lebanese Armenian students and the youth sector of the Tashnag Party staged a protest Monday outside the Turkish embassy in Rabieh.

The protesters condemned “the breach of the truce agreement between Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan and Turkey’s support for Azerbaijan in the conflict (with Armenia) over the region,” the National News Agency said.

The new government will not comprise political figures but rather specialists named by the political parties and there is an attempt to keep the energy portfolio with the Free Patriotic Movement, media reports said on Monday.

“The possibility of forming the government this week has been ruled out and Hizbullah is clinging to the health portfolio, which is also demanded by Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat,” MTV quoted unnamed sources as saying.

A personal dispute in the Baalbek neighborhood of al-Sharawneh on Monday escalated into gunfire, including the firing of rocket-propelled grenades, the National News Agency said.

NNA said the clash, between members of the same clan, caused material damage.

The Health Ministry’s scientific panel will submit a recommendation to the country’s national anti-coronavirus committee on the need to lock down some neighborhoods in major cities, including the capital, in order to contain the spread of the virus, caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hassan said on Monday.

“Sometimes the infection originates in the city before moving to rural areas, not the opposite,” Hassan explained.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea on Monday said it seems no hopes can be pinned on the new government in light of the way it is being formed.

In an interview with Radio Free Lebanon, Geagea said the LF will only grant its vote of confidence to “a government of real independents formed of competent and specialist ministers who know exactly how to work.”

A second round of US-backed negotiations to demarcate the sea border between Lebanon and Israel was postponed for “technical” reasons, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Monday.

The new French ambassador to Lebanon, Anne Griot, confirmed that her task in Lebanon was to carry out a “specific mission” to follow up on the French plan launched by French President Emmanuel Macron, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Monday.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara el-Rahi declared at the opening of the Synod on Monday that the future government must be “distinguished” from its predecessors and is required to draw up a rescue plan.

A "high-ranking" Russian delegation is expected to arrive in Beirut mid week for “very important” talks with senior Lebanese officials in light of a crunching economic and financial crisis in the country, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Monday.

The delegations’ visit comes after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov postponed a planned visit this month to the capital.