Iraqi embassy staff left Damascus on Sunday for neighboring Lebanon, a diplomatic source told AFP, after Syrian rebel forces seized the capital and declared the end of President Bashar al-Assad's rule.

The Lebanese Army said on Sunday it was reinforcing its presence on the border with neighboring Syria, after the government of longtime President Bashar al-Assad fell and rebels took the capital Damascus.

Syrians have crowded the Lebanese side of the Masnaa border crossing Sunday waiting to cross back into Syria after the fall of Bashar Assad.

Lebanon’s General Security closed the crossing overnight but reopened it in the morning, allowing Syrians to freely cross out of Lebanon while restricting their entry from Syria into the country.

Hezbollah is pulling its forces from the outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus and the Homs area, a source close to the Lebanese group said Sunday, as their ally President Bashar al-Assad faces a rebel offensive.

Lebanon’s government has approved a plan to deploy more troops along the border with Israel, part of the ceasefire deal that ended the Israel-Hezbollah war.

In a rare Cabinet meeting outside of Beirut, held Saturday at a military base in the southern port city of Tyre, the government also approved a draft law to reconstruct buildings destroyed during the Israel-Hezbollah war that broke out in October 2023 and ended with a U.S.-brokered ceasefire last week.

A source close to Hezbollah said Saturday that the group sent 2,000 fighters to a part of Syria near the border with Lebanon, as ally Damascus reels from a rebel offensive that has seized major cities in recent days.

Lebanon’s General Security Directorate said the country is closing all land border crossing with Syria except for a main one that links Beirut with the Syrian capital Damascus.

The decision by the security agency in charge of border crossings came hours after an Israeli airstrike damaged the Arida border crossing with Syria in north Lebanon, days after it was reopened.

Kataeb leader MP Sami Gemayel said that Hezbollah has surrendered and south Lebanon was destroyed in only 10 days of Israeli strikes.

Gemayel demanded Hezbollah be disarmed, stressing that the group has stopped being a Lebanese "resistance" movement since it entered Syria, in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein will attend a presidential election session scheduled for January 9, LBCI reported.

The media outlet said that Hochstein has promised Speaker Nabih Berri that he'll attend the session, after the latter invited him in a phone call.

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil said he supports Hezbollah in defending Lebanon but not in exposing it, calling for a full implementation of the ceasefire with Israel and for keeping Lebanon away from regional conflicts.

"We have lost the deterrence equation but Israel today cannot stroll in Lebanon the way it did in 1982," Bassil said in a televised interview. "There is neither defeat nor victory, but the Shiites now know that they cannot bet on other arenas and cannot continue with wrong choices."