Damascus on Tuesday denied that its warplanes had bombed areas on the Lebanese-Syrian border, accusing “hostile” countries of circulating the media reports.

“The reports circulated by some Lebanese, Arab and international media outlets about Syrian warplanes dropping bombs inside Lebanese territory are false and baseless,” Syria's state news agency SANA quoted an unnamed foreign ministry official as saying.

Israeli aircraft on Monday released scarlet heat balloons over Lebanon's regional waters, in the first such violation in around a year.

"Israeli warplanes dropped more than 30 scarlet heat balloons between Naqoura and Tyre within two hours," state-run National News Agency reported.

The Phalange Party called on Monday for "laying out a military plan to contain unrest-prone areas”, urging the cabinet to reach out to the international community to respond to Syria's threats of bombing Lebanese territories.

"We demand laying out a military plan to contain unrest-prone areas, imposing security and preventing the appearance of gunmen,” the party said in a released statement after the political bureau's weekly meetings, condemning Sunday's attacks on Sunni clerics.

Syrian warplanes bombed the border area with Lebanon for the first time on Monday, a high-ranking Lebanese army official told Agence France Presse, reportedly targeting Syrian rebel positions inside Lebanon.

"Syrian planes bombed the border between Lebanon and Syria but I cannot yet say if they hit Lebanese territory or only Syrian territory," the military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Three fuel tankers with Syrian plate numbers were torched on Thursday in an old wheat market in the northern city of Tripoli, the National News Agency reported.

"Seven tankers were attacked and their drivers were detained for a while before being released by the residents of (the northern area of) Bab al-Tabbaneh,” Agence France Presse elaborated.

A divisive debate over Lebanon's electoral law may delay parliamentary elections scheduled for June 9, stoking fears of instability in a country already rattled by the conflict in neighboring Syria.

Nominations opened on Monday but no candidate has yet been registered. Meanwhile, rival political groups have quibbled over how legislative power should be shared out in the multi-confessional country.

President Michel Suleiman said Wednesday that rival leaders should adopt an electoral vote law that is consistent with the Taef accord away from political confessionalism.

MPs should “find a law that is consistent with the Taef and does not take back (the country) to sectarian laws,” Suleiman told Lebanese expatriates in Senegal on the second day of his visit to the West African country before heading to the Ivory Coast on Thursday.

Argentina's Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected Pope Francis I on Wednesday, becoming the first Latin American pontiff in a surprise decision that signaled a desire for a more open Catholic Church.

The 76-year-old moderate emerged smiling on to the balcony of St Peter's Basilica to cries of "Long live the pope!" as tens of thousands of pilgrims cheered, cried and applauded.

Change and Reform parliamentary bloc leader MP Michel Aoun expressed on Tuesday that any delay in approving the Orthodox Gathering's draft electoral law is a "crime against the country", calling for the formation of a special court to investigate financial violations committed in Lebanon.

"Whoever delays the approval of the Orthodox Gathering law would be allowing vacuum to take place and committing a crime against the country,” Aoun stated after the bloc's weekly meeting, adding that constitutional deadlines must be respected.

Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour denied on Monday reports that the Lebanese hostages, kidnapped in Nigeria in February, have been killed, in light of the emergence of a video allegedly showing the victims.

He told LBCI television that none of the individuals shown in the video are the Lebanese hostages.