Crisis-hit Lebanon marks two years Thursday since a massive explosion ripped through Beirut, with victims' relatives planning protest marches as they keep demanding truth and justice.

Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati on Wednesday snapped back at the Free Patriotic Movement, and blamed “the interference of the president’s entourage” among other things for the failure to form a new government.

“The FPM keeps stirring quarrels and reversing facts on the brink of the end of the presidential tenure, in a clear attempt to deviate attention from the failure that characterized the past years in all fields,” Mikati’s press office said in a statement.

Hezbollah deputy chief Sheikh Naim Qassem has noted that “today the Lebanese state is interested in the issue of recovering the water, oil and gas rights” and this is “a good scene.”

“The harmony present among the top leaders of the Lebanese state in favor of the unified stance on demarcation and on obtaining the Lebanese rights is a positive factor,” Qassem said in during a Ashura ceremony.

The indirect negotiations with Israel over sea border demarcation have entered a “very advanced stage” and the technical details are now being tackled, caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib has said.

Speaking to al-Joumhouria newspaper, Bou Habib said he asked U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein upon the latter’s arrival in his office about the rest of the members of his time, after he noticed that two members were missing.

On the second anniversary of the catastrophic explosion at the port of Beirut on August 4, 2020, members of the International Support Group for Lebanon (ISG) have expressed their solidarity with Lebanon and its people, particularly with the families of the victims and “all those whose lives were affected by that event that shook Lebanon and the world.”

“We remember the more than 200 dead, and the many thousands who were injured, lost homes or employment, and who suffered trauma,” the ISG said in a statement.

Security forces on Wednesday cordoned off Beirut’s port and employees were asked to leave as the sensors installed in the northern part of the blast-silos sent signals indicating that a fresh collapse is imminent.

Ukraine's ambassador to Lebanon on Wednesday insisted a Syrian ship docked at a Lebanese port is carrying stolen Ukrainian grain and urged Lebanon to block the vessel from leaving.

The claim comes just days before the tiny cash-strapped country receives Ukraine's first grain shipment since Russia's invasion began over five months ago.

United Nations experts and top NGOs urged the U.N. Human Rights Council on Wednesday to launch an international investigation into the deadly Beirut port blast, on the eve of its two-year anniversary.

The August 4, 2020 mega-blast killed more than 200 people and destroyed swathes of the Lebanese capital, after a stockpile of haphazardly stored ammonium nitrate fertilizer caught fire at the port.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri expressed Wednesday his support for a national dialogue initiative suggested by Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi.

Thousands of Iraqi protesters have been occupying the parliament in Baghdad's Green Zone for the past five days.

Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea said Wednesday that the next President should be sovereign and reformist, refusing a President from the March 8 Alliance or a consensual President.

"We will oppose with all our strength the election of a President from the March 8 Alliance," Geagea said in a press conference as he accused the so-called Axis of Defiance of being the root cause of the crisis.