Special Tribunal for Lebanon Pre-Trial Judge Daniel Fransen postponed on Thursday the start of trial in the case of Ayyash et al., announced the STL in a statement.

The decision is in response to the Defense Counsel for the four accused in the February 14, 2005 attack asking Fransen to postpone the trial date.

Israeli President Shimon Peres on Thursday made a fresh call for the European Union to put Hizbullah on its terror blacklist, after Syrian rebels claimed the group had fired across the border at Syrian villages.

Earlier this month, Bulgaria named Hizbullah as responsible for a July bombing in the seaside report of Burgas which killed five Israeli tourists and their local driver, bringing fresh calls for Hizbullah to be added to the EU blacklist.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun on Tuesday said “new realities” might emerge concerning ties with his Christian rivals, after they contributed to the joint parliamentary committees' approval of the controversial draft electoral law proposed by the Orthodox Gathering.

“Today is the brightest day in Lebanon's history because rights were returned to their owners without encroaching on the rights of others. The value of the votes of marginalized groups has been restored, that's why we're happy with this achievement,” Aoun told reporters after the weekly meeting of the Change and Reform in Rabiyeh.

The Islamist group Ansaru on Monday claimed the kidnapping of seven foreigners, including two Lebanese, in a deadly raid on a construction site in northern Nigeria at the weekend.

In an email statement distributed to several journalists, the group said it has "the custody of seven persons, which include Lebanese and their European counterparts working with Setraco," the Lebanese-owned company targeted in the attack.

Gunmen attacked a camp for a construction company in rural northern Nigeria, killing a guard and kidnapping seven foreign workers from Britain, Greece, Italy and Lebanon, authorities said Sunday, in the biggest kidnapping yet in a region under attack by Islamic extremists.

The attack Saturday night happened in Jama're, a town in a rural portion of Bauchi state. There, the gunmen first attacked a local prison, burning two police trucks, Bauchi state police spokesman Hassan Muhammed told The Associated Press.

Three Lebanese Shiites have been killed in fighting in Syria, a Hizbullah official said Sunday, as the Syrian opposition accused the Lebanese group of intervening on the side of the regime.

"Two Lebanese Shiites living in Syria were killed and at least 14 others wounded in clashes with rebels," the official told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity, later adding that one of the wounded had also died.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat advised former Prime Minister Saad Hariri to keep away from the issues of Hizbullah's weapons and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, explaining that these are only “minor details in the midst of what is happening in the Middle East”.

"The STL is only a detail amid the Middle East's current events,” Jumblat said in an interview with Al-Arabiya television, adding that the Syrian people will “give March 14 justice”.

A moderate Republican senator has said she'll oppose the confirmation of Chuck Hagel to become President Barack Obama's secretary of defense over his “unsettling” views on Hizbullah and Iran and other critical threats facing the U.S.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins had been viewed as a possible supporter of Hagel, but she said in a four-page statement on Wednesday that Hagel was unwilling to ask the European Union to designate Hizbullah a terrorist organization in 2006, and he has been hesitant to back the use of all non-military options, such as unilateral sanctions, to pressure Iran into ceasing its nuclear program.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea stated on Wednesday that there is “unannounced war on Sunnis in Lebanon”, revealing that he will not take part in the March 14 commemoration of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's assassination on Thursday.

“There is an attempt to accuse Sunnis of terrorism and of being behind all operations on the military institutions,” Geagea said in an interview with Future TV, accusing the Free Patriotic Movement of taking on the task to attack Sunnis in the “war against the Shiites”.

Free Patriotic Movement MP Michel Aoun renewed on Tuesday his rejection of a parliamentary electoral law that does not guarantee the election of 64 Christian MPs, while warning against handing over telecommunication data to security agencies.

He said after the Change and Reform bloc's weekly meeting: “We have the right to take our case to the constitutional council if our demand for a law that ensures the election of 64 Christian lawmakers is not met.”