Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat criticized on Thursday the sentence issued by the military court against former Minister Michel Samaha.

“The court's verdict in Samaha's case legalizes assassinations and explosions,” he said in a statement.

The Lebanese army said Thursday it has arrested several people suspected of opening fire and attempting to escape from a military patrol in the southern city of Sidon.

A military communique said the unit apprehended the four citizens and three Palestinians in the area of al-Taamir.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun is expected on Friday to deliver a slashing speech and announce that the ministers representing him in the government would stop attending sessions if it failed to appoint new security officials.

While some sources said Aoun would withdraw his ministers and keep their resignation as an option, other officials stressed that the FPM chief would not announce his upcoming steps.

Labor Minister Sejaan Qazzi stressed on Thursday that Lebanon is imposing strict measures on Syrian laborers and not restrictions.

“The conditions are in line with the national resolutions that are linked to the organization of the work of foreign laborers and with the labor laws applied in all countries around the world,” Qazzi revealed in comments to the pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat.

Thousands of Hizbullah fighters are engaged in the battle in the Syrian region of Qalamoun as the party's leadership is seeking to boost its capabilities and improve its performance to control the area along with the Syrian Army forces.

“Thousands of fighters, who hail from various Lebanese towns, are participating in the war raging in al-Qalamoun,” prominent Hizbullah sources told the Kuwaiti al-Rai newspaper on Thursday.

A Lebanese businessman was killed overnight near the town of Charbilla in the northern district of Akkar, the state-run National News Agency reported on Thursday.

NNA said Asaad al-Warraq's bullet-riddled body was found meters away from the entrance to his town.

Hizbullah and the Syrian army seized control Wednesday of the strategic Tallet Moussa hill in Syria's Qalamoun, as they pressed on with a major offensive against militant groups in the border region.

“The Syrian army and the fighters of the resistance (Hizbullah) have taken the strategic Tallet Moussa hill in Qalamoun,” Hizbullah's al-Manar television reported.

The Military Court on Wednesday sentenced former minister Michel Samaha to four and a half years of hard labor and stripped him of his civil rights, state-run National News Agency reported.

Samaha had been charged with transporting explosives in his car from Syria into Lebanon with the aim of staging bombings and assassinating Lebanese officials and religious figures at the behest of Syrian security services chief Ali Mamluk.

The Lebanese army said on Wednesday it has arrested more than 150 fugitives and suspects during raids it carried out in Beirut, the eastern Bekaa Valley and the northern district of Akkar.

In a communique, the army said a unit raided the houses of several individuals in the areas of Haret Hreik and the airport road in Beirut's southern suburbs, arresting two people wanted for using firearms and driving a stolen vehicle.

At least 11 people were injured, including Lebanese and Syrian women and children, when a bus rammed into several cars near the Bekaa border crossing of al-Masnaa on Wednesday.

Three Lebanese Red Cross units rushed to the scene as medics tried to aid those who were wounded.