The Iranian foreign ministry on Monday condemned Washington’s calls for disarming Hezbollah in Lebanon, noting that “this decision is a domestic affair that no side has the right to interfere in.”

Voter turnout reached 45.08 percent in the first round of Lebanon’s municipal elections that was held in Mount Lebanon on Sunday, the Interior Ministry said.

Polling stations opened at 7:00 am Sunday across Mount Lebanon’s six districts, in the first round of Lebanon’s municipal elections.

Hezbollah chief Sheikh Naim Qassem has said that Hezbollah “cannot continue with the same pace in all the security, military, political and cultural fields,” promising “a comprehensive evaluation of the previous period.”

“We will work on facing these challenges with the continuation of the resistance as a liberation project and rejecting all forms of occupation, naturalization and normalization according to our available capabilities, while improving what we can, along with our allies, to confront these challenges in various ways,” Qassem added, in an interview with the pro-Hezbollah Eqtidar news portal.

The army on Friday announced the arrest of two men who assaulted the imam of the mosque of the Mt. Lebanon town of Chbaniyeh in an incident apparently related to the sectarian violence between Druze and Sunnis in neighboring Syria.

President Joseph Aoun has stressed that the Lebanese Army is doing a “mighty job” and that its operations are still ongoing in the area south of the Litani River, despite the “geographic challenges and limited capabilities.”

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri held talks Wednesday in Ain el-Tineh with the new head of the ceasefire monitoring committee, U.S. major general Michael Leeney, who was accompanied by the committee’s outgoing head Major General Jasper Jeffers.

President Joseph Aoun has stressed that “the decision of removing arms will be implemented across Lebanon but the priority is for the South.”

Major General Jasper Jeffers, Chairman of the Cessation of Hostilities Implementation Mechanism, met Wednesday with Lebanese and UNIFIL leadership in Beirut, accompanied by Major General Michael Leeney.

“Major General Leeney is joining the Mechanism to provide a full-time senior U.S. military leader in Beirut to continue the strong relationship between the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and U.S. military,” the U.S. Embassy said in a statement.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel carried out a strike in Syria on Wednesday on an "extremist group" preparing to attack members of the Druze community in the Damascus region.