Contract workers of Electricite du Liban in Hermel and North Bekaa kicked off a strike on Wednesday pressing a demand for their full-time employment, the National News Agency reported.

The employees closed the EDL offices to take part in a sit-in planned at 10:00 am in the area of Douros at the entrance of Baalbek, NNA added.

The visit of Chairman of Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Alaeddin Boroujerdi to Lebanon was not a coincidence, but more to cover informal meetings that had been planned beforehand with Hizbullah to coordinate on several topics, An Nahar daily reported on Wednesday.

Ministerial sources highlighted Boroujerdi's comments after his meeting with PM Tammam Salam that lashed at Saudi Arabia. They said that he deliberately criticized the kingdom at the gate of the Grand Serail to merely embarrass Salam, added the daily.

Speaker Nabih Berri said on Wednesday that he had received “positive feedback” from the interlocutors at the dialogue session a day earlier in Ain el-Tineh, mainly their adherence to the Taef accord, An Nahar daily reported.

A lifeguard and a summer camp's supervisor were on Tuesday ordered held by the attorney general of the North district in connection with the drowning death of the child Kevin Metlej, media reports said.

Chairman of Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Alaeddin Boroujerdi on Tuesday voiced support for the national dialogue sessions that kicked off under the auspices of Speaker Nabih Berri, while noting that Iran does not have a favorite candidate in Lebanon's presidential race.

The national dialogue sessions between heads of the parliamentary blocs kicked off on Tuesday at Speaker Nabih Berri's residence in Ain el-Tineh to address a number of thorny issues that include the election of a president, the formation of a new government and a new voting system.

Berri inaugurated the session by “reiterating the need to agree on a package deal that begins with the election of a president.”

A man who was briefly abducted has been freed early on Tuesday in the outskirts of the eastern town of Barqa in the Bekaa valley, the National News Agency reported.

Late on Monday, four armed men in a Mercedes abducted Ibrahim Qozhaya Rabah on a road between the towns of Safra and Deir al-Ahmar, NNA said.

Security sources said on Tuesday that contacts between the Lebanese state and the abductors of the servicemen to negotiate their release have been cut for a long time, al-Akhbar daily reported.

The contacts between the government and the leadership of the Islamic State group have been cut off for a long time after the IS refused to hand the party, mediating a release, any clue of the destiny of the abducted soldiers, said the daily.

Al-Mustaqbal Movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri held separate consultations Monday with the members of the Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc and Progressive Socialist Party chief MP Walid Jumblat, on the eve of three days of consecutive national dialogue sessions.

The army on Monday retaliated to shelling from the Islamic State group on the border with Syria after destroying a post for al-Nusra Front in the outskirts of the northeastern border town of Arsal, state-run National News Agency reported.