Caretaker Interior Minister Bassam al-Mawlawi on Friday suggested that certain “sides” are inciting depositors to storm banks, shortly after the country witnessed a record five bank “heists” in one day.

“Our meeting’s aim is not to protect the banks but rather the country,” Mawlawi said after an emergency meeting for the Central Internal Security Council, telling depositors that their money “cannot be recovered through a method that is punishable by law.”

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on Friday adjourned a legislative session on the 2022 state budget to September 26 after the meeting lost its quorum due to a walkout by the opposition MPs.

The legislature had earlier approved a three-fold hike in the salaries of public sector employees, pensioners and the armed forces.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea appeared Friday to disapprove of the wave of bank heists that occurred throughout the day.

“The bank storming operations that occurred today and the chaos that accompanied them are their Lebanon,” Geagea tweeted.

Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has met with the official spokesman of Yemen’s Huthi rebels and the head of the Huthi negotiating team, Mohammed Abdul Salam, Hezbollah said on Friday.

The talks tackled “the latest political situations in the region in general and in Yemen in particular, especially as to the negotiations of the current truce, the developments on the ground, and the prospects for the proposed solutions,” Hezbollah added in a statement.

At least five banks were stormed by depositors on Friday, prompting the Association of Banks in Lebanon (ABL) to declare a three-day strike and caretaker Interior Minister Bassam al-Mawlawi to call for an emergency meeting of the Central Internal Security Council.

The incidents started in the morning, when a depositor carrying a gun and a jerrican of fuel withdrew his frozen savings at gunpoint from Byblos Bank in Ghazieh.

Israel's energy ministry said Friday it was set to conduct tests on a maritime field claimed in part by Lebanon, ahead of connecting it to Israel's gas network.

The Free Patriotic Movement will not allow caretaker PM Najib Mikati to “rule” the country with his caretaker government in the event of a presidential vacuum, FPM sources told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper in remarks published Friday.

A Lebanese activist group has vowed to organize more bank heists to help people retrieve their locked savings as the country's years-long economic crisis continues to worsen.

Activists from Depositors' Outcry group accompanied Sali Hafez into a Beirut bank branch on Wednesday, and she was able to retrieve some $13,000 in her savings to fund her sister's cancer treatment.

All parties, including Hezbollah, are awaiting the next two weeks to decide on the next steps, and Lebanese sides concerned with the sea border negotiations have received signals that Israel wants an “understanding” and not a “full agreement” over demarcation, a media report said on Thursday.

“The American side is showing clear desire to finalize the agreement before October, and it has advised the Israeli side not to postpone the matter until after the Israeli elections,” al-Akhbar newspaper reported.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on Thursday noted that calling for a presidential vote session without at least “some consensus” would be an “adventure.”

“This is my jurisdiction and when I assess that there is some sort of consensus, I will call for a session,” Berri said when asked by MP Paula Yacoubian about setting a date for a session to elect a new president.