Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea hailed on Monday President Michel Suleiman over his “sovereign stances,” calling on Prime Minister-designate Tammam Salam to form his cabinet within two weeks or to refrain from the task.

“The presidency is the only position in this state that is alive as the caretaker cabinet isn't moving and the parliament is paralyzed,” Geagea told al-Akhbar newspaper in an interview.

The Lebanese army intelligence detained a Palestinian national suspected of belonging to an extremist group plotting to carry out a “terrorist act” in the southern portal city of Sidon.

According to al-Akhbar newspaper published on Monday, Mohammed A. H. was arrested while he was entering Ain el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp.

Speaker Nabih Berri has vowed to facilitate the task of Premier-designate Tammam Salam in forming the new government, considering him the best option at this sensitive stage.

In remarks to As Safir daily published Monday, Berri said he would exert all efforts to remove the obstacles confronting the cabinet formation process.

A resident of the Bekaa town of Taalabaya was briefly kidnapped on Sunday during unrest that erupted following a deadly incident in the barren mountains of Ras Baalbek in the Bekaa.

The abductee Mohannad Mehieddine has been released after he was kidnapped at a checkpoint set up by gunmen in the town of al-Labweh in the wake of the shooting death of the four young men between al-Qaa and Hermel, state-run National News Agency reported.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Miqati on Sunday urged calm and restraint after a deadly incident in the Bekaa region inflamed sectarian tensions, as the Army Command stressed that it will not allow anyone to take advantage of the situation.

In the wake of the shooting death of three Lebanese Shiites and a Turk whose mother is Lebanese in the barren mountains of the town of Ras Baalbek, Miqati “followed up on the security situation in the Arsal region and northern Bekaa through a series of contacts with Army Commander General Jean Qahwaji and the chiefs of security agencies,” a statement issued by the premier's office said.

Four people were killed, including two members of the Jaafar clan, when their car came under gunfire in Arsal's barren mountains, state-run National News Agency reported.

The unidentified assailants shot dead "two members of the Jaafar family, an Amhaz family member and a Turk" in an ambush while they were smuggling fuel through the Qaa area, a security source told Agence France Presse, asking not to be named.

The head of the Lebanese Option Party, Ahmed al-Asaad, called the killer of the student committee official “a beast,” holding Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Lebanese authorities responsible for his murder and claiming that he had received a death threat.

Holding a photo of Hizbullah members wielding batons and assaulting protesters, al-Asaad pointed to one of them, saying: “We believe he is the beast who killed Hashem Salman.”

Hizbullah fighters and members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards are training Syrian troops to spearhead an offensive against rebel-held areas in Aleppo in Syria's north, UK's Sunday Times reported.

UK's The Independent also said Sunday that Iran has decided to send a first contingent of 4,000 Revolutionary Guards to Syria to support President Bashar Assad’s forces against the rebels.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi slammed both the March 8 and 14 alliances on Sunday for “tarnishing Lebanon’s image” and paralyzing state institutions in addition to shoving the country in Syria's crisis.

In a harshly worded sermon at Our Lady of Lebanon basilica in Harissa, al-Rahi called for “national reconciliation among politicians and mainly the so-called March 8 and 14 alliances that have tarnished Lebanon's image and its coexistence.”

The residents of a northern town blocked the highway that links it with Syria to protest a shooting from the Syrian side of the border that burned agricultural lands.

The road that leads to al-Abboudiyeh crossing in Akkar district was blocked after wheat farmers came under fire in the area of al-Armeh.