Marada Movement chief Suleiman Franjieh has noted that he has met with most Arab ambassadors in Lebanon and that none of them has informed him of any negative stance regarding his presidential nomination.

“To those who consider that my presidential chances have ended I tell them no, and to those saying that my presidential chances are 100% I also tell them no. My chances are rather 50/50 and Saudi Arabia has not placed any veto on my nomination,” Franjieh said in an interview on LBCI television.

Former General Security chief Abbas Ibrahim has confirmed a role in the negotiations with Hamas over a prisoner swap with Israel.

"Few hours separate us from the humanitarian truce in Gaza," Ibrahim said in a televised interview on Wednesday night.

The area around Dar al-Fatwa in Beirut witnessed a popular protest that forced the cancellation of a visit by U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea.

Protesters in Lebanon have accused Washington of supporting the killing of civilians in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli army.

Hezbollah on Thursday fired anti-tank missiles at the Margaliot and Ramim Israeli military posts near Lebanon's border, as the Israeli army shelled southern border areas.

An Israeli army spokesman meanwhile said that an Israeli drone came under fire over the occupied Shebaa Farms.

Israeli air strikes killed three pro-Iran fighters on Wednesday as they hit sites belonging to Lebanon's Hezbollah near the Syrian capital Damascus, a war monitor said.

Israel has struck Syria several times in the past month as regional tensions simmer over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

Security forces in Brazil, in collaboration with Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency and its partners within the Israeli security community, as well as other international security and law enforcement agencies, have successfully foiled a planned attack by Hezbollah, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Wednesday.

Israeli artillery shelling targeted Wednesday Ramia, Beit Leef, and the outskirts of the border towns of al-Labbouneh, al-Naqoura, Rmeish, Aita al-Shaab, Halta and al-Mari, after three rockets landed in Zarit and Shtula, in the Israeli upper western Galilee. Israel also shelled the outskirts of Mays al-Jabal, Blida, Houla, Mhaibib and Yaroun after the Israeli posts of al-Assi, al-Bayyad, Brket Risha, Yiftah, al-Jerdah and Dovev were targeted from Lebanon.

The football pitch in the border town of Houla was also targeted with three missiles, as Israel fired shells that didn't explode at a house and a car.

After an Israeli airstrike killed a grandmother and her three grandchildren in Lebanon’s Ainata and Hezbollah’s retaliatory shelling of Kiryat Shmona, U.S. and European diplomatic efforts intensified in a bid to contain the situation and avoid an all-out war between Lebanon and Israel, media reports said.

U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein’s surprise visit to Beirut is “part of this inclination,” al-Binaa newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The parliamentary bloc of the Free Patriotic Movement has reiterated its objection to the extension of the term of Army chief Gen. Joseph Aoun ahead of his planned retirement in January, considering it "unconstitutional."

"There are legal solutions to avoid the vacancy," the Strong Lebanon bloc said in a statement Tuesday.

U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein’s held a “good” meeting Tuesday with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, parliamentary sources informed on the talks said.

“This is reflected in the course that the Americans are taking and the efforts that they are exerting to prevent an expansion of the conflict,” the sources told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper in remarks published Wednesday.