Gunmen in northern Nigeria's Kaduna state on Monday shot dead a Lebanese man and his Nigerian driver and abducted another Lebanese national, the state police spokesman said.

"The gunmen attacked the construction bus in which they were traveling, shot dead a Lebanese and the Nigerian driver and kidnapped another Lebanese," Aminu Lawan told Agence France Presse on telephone from Kaduna city.

More than 1,000 people marched in Beirut on Sunday calling for the establishment of a secular state in the country which is ruled by a system of power-sharing along religious lines.

"Secularism is the solution," and "The people demand a civil state," the crowds chanted as they marched in Beirut streets waving Lebanese flags.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun snapped back on Saturday at Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat, considering the adoption of an electoral law based on proportional representation would reflect Jumblat’s real political weight.

“Jumblat considers himself the only logical person… But the proportional representation would reflect his real political weight,” Aoun said in a ceremony marking the 7th anniversary of his return from exile to Paris in May 2005.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Saturday that over 24,000 Syrian refugees fled the unrest in their country to Lebanon.

A weekly update by the UNHCR said that “13,405 refugees have been registered in the North in coordination with the Higher Relief Council.”

The debate flared up again on Friday between the Syrian and Saudi ambassadors to Lebanon over the issue of a Syria-bound arms ship recently seized in Lebanon’s territorial waters.

Syrian ambassador Ali Abdul Karim Ali declared on NBN television that he has severed ties with Saudi ambassador Ali Awadh Asiri, saying “he’s the one who dealt an unfriendly blow to a brotherly relation.”

Security forces killed at least 33 people on Friday as protesters took to their streets in their thousands on Friday to call for regime change, activists and a rights watchdog said.

The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said security forces killed seven people in the northwestern province of Idlib, seven in the Damascus neighborhood of al-Tadamon, six in the central province of Hama, five in the central province of Homs, four in the northern province of Aleppo, two in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, one in the Damascus suburb of al-Mleiha and one in the southern province of Daraa.

Prime Minister Najib Miqati held talks on Wednesday with visiting Iranian Vice President Mohammed Reza Rahimi on cooperation between Lebanon and Iran.

The meeting at the Grand Serail also focused on improving the agreements and Memorandums of Understandings signed between the two countries.

Egyptian security services foiled an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Cairo several months ago, the legal advisor of the kingdom's embassy said in local dailies on Tuesday.

Egypt "arrested three Iranians planning to assassinate the ambassador, Ahmed Qattan," Al-Hayat quoted Sami Jamal as saying.

Former premier Saad Hariri on Monday called on Lebanon’s workers to “put an end to this farce and raise the voice” against the government whose members are “stealing public money.”

In a press release marking Labor Day, which Lebanon observes on May 1, Hariri said “workers are the productive class in our society and it is our duty to celebrate their day with them.”

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun on Monday accused the opposition March 14 camp of “practicing obstruction” and slammed Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat over his rejection of an electoral law based on proportional representation.

“The parliamentary minority is practicing obstruction in collusion with some of the executive authority, and we will not remain silent over this issue even if some people launched verbal attacks,” Aoun told reporters after the weekly meeting of the Change and Reform parliamentary bloc in Rabiyeh.