Egypt's army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said Wednesday he had he quit the military to run for president, in a widely anticipated move almost nine months after he toppled the elected leader.

Sisi, who was also defense minister, faces no serious competition in the upcoming election, likely before June, and is expected to easily win the poll riding on a wave of popularity.

The death toll for the sectarian clashes that engulfed the northern city of Tripoli increased to 27 on Monday after a man succumbed to his injuries at the hospital.

Accoridng to LBCI Abdullah Minnawi passed away as 12 days of fighting pro- and anti-Damascus fighters in the country's second city Tripoli subsided on Monday.

Hilal Assad, a relative of Syrian President Bashar Assad and commander of the pro-regime National Defense Forces in Latakia, was killed Sunday in clashes with rebels in the Kasab region, state news agency SANA said reported.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Hilal and at least seven of his men were killed in clashes with the extremist al-Nusra Front and other Islamist brigades in the town of Kasab.

One person was killed and at least ten were wounded on Sunday in clashes that erupted at dawn between Salafists and supporters of Arab Movement Party leader Shaker al-Berjawi near the Sports City center in Beirut.

Al-Jadeed television identified the victim as Khalil Nabil al-Hanash, whom Agence France Presse said Hanash was a member of the Arab Movement Party.

The northern city of Tripoli was witnessing fierce clashes on Friday as the casualty toll from nine days of fighting rose to at least 25 dead and 175 wounded amid a call for a unilateral ceasefire and intensive political contacts to end the violence.

"After we held contacts with the army command in the North, we asked the leaders of Bab al-Tabbaneh and the neighboring areas to cease fire starting 10:00 PM and the army must respond to any source of gunfire," MP Mohammed Kabbara said after an emergency meeting for the Islamic National Gathering at his residence.

Syria's air force on Thursday carried out fresh strikes on areas on the outskirts of the northeastern border town of Arsal.

Voice of Lebanon radio (93.3) said Syrian warplanes carried out eight raids in two stages on Khirbet Younin on the outskirts of Arsal at noon, targeting Syrian opposition fighters.

The Lebanese army reopened on Wednesday the Labweh-Arsal road in the eastern Bekaa Valley and sent reinforcements to Arsal, a Sunni border town blamed for rocket fire on Shiite areas, to deploy on its outskirts.

OTV said the military carried out patrols in the town on Wednesday morning.

Demonstrators blocked several key roads throughout the country on Tuesday to protest the continued closure of the only route leading from and to the border town of Arsal by residents of neighboring al-Labweh.

In the Bekaa, “a number of individuals blocked the al-Masnaa road in solidarity with Arsal,” al-Jadeed television reported.

A bomb along the Syria-Israel frontier in the occupied Golan Heights on Tuesday wounded four Israeli soldiers, the Israeli army said, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Israel would act "forcefully."

The army said in a statement that "an explosive device was detonated against IDF (Israeli military) soldiers patrolling the Israeli-Syrian border," adding that several soldiers were wounded in the attack.

The government of the Marshall Islands on Tuesday defeated a motion of no confidence brought after it nominated Lebanon's former General Security chief Maj. Gen. Jamil al-Sayyed as its ambassador to UNESCO.

The motion from opposition leaders in the Pacific nation's parliament was defeated by 17 votes to 13 after more than four hours of acrimonious debate.