Speaker Nabih Berri voiced on Monday his support to the measures undertaken by the army in the northeastern Bekaa border town of Arsal.

“The army should be allowed to assume its tasks... It is carrying out its responsibilities to the fullest,” Berri said in comments published in An Nahar newspaper.

Thousands of Hizbullah and Amal movement supporters took part on Sunday in eastern Lebanon's Hermel in the last in a series of protests against a U.S.-made film which mocks Islam.

"Death to America! Israel, enemy of Muslims!" chanted the crowd made of men, women and children waving the yellow Hizbullah flags.

Interior Minister Marwan Charbel confirmed on Sunday claims that Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun's convoy was shot at in the southern city of Sidon but stressed the shooting targeted an empty vehicle.

The shot targeted one of the distraction vehicles that was on the road before the actual convoy, he told LBCI television.

March 14 officials will hold intense talks next week to unite their stance on President Michel Suleiman's blueprint on a national defense strategy and an electoral law that satisfies all the opposition parties, a March 14 opposition told al-Mustaqbal daily Sunday.

Some opposition officials have already made several proposals and meetings are being held to discuss them, al-Mustaqbal and An Nahar newspapers said.

Interior Minister Marwan Charbel denied on Sunday that some political parties had given refuge to wanted suspects in Beirut's southern suburbs.

“It's not true that some parties in the suburbs gave refuge to some of the wanted” individuals, Charbel told a Kuwaiti newspaper.

A Lebanese man was kidnapped by four masked gunmen in the town of Makseh in the eastern Bekaa valley on Saturday night despite a crackdown by armed forces on the kidnap-for-ransom phenomenon.

Bassel al-Mays was on his way home along with his wife when the four men blocked his road, opened fire in the air and forced the woman out of their car.

Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun has said that he escaped a fourth assassination attempt on Saturday after his motorcade came under fire in the southern city of Sidon.

During an address at an FPM dinner in Batroun after midnight Saturday, Aoun said he had previously escaped three murder attempts.

Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun's convoy came under gunfire in the southern port city of Sidon on Saturday while he was returning from Jezzine.

Aoun's press office confirmed the incident after denying it for “security reasons.”

Thousands of supporters of Hizbullah protested on Saturday in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil against a film mocking Islam.

"This film that insults the Prophet is not merely a trivial creation carried out by a group, but American politics intended to be disseminated to the Western world," Hizbullah MP Nawaf al-Moussawi told the crowd.

President Michel Suleiman hailed on Saturday the measures undertaken by the Army in the northeastern Bekaa border town of Arsal.

“The measures carried out by the Army in Arsal are to preserve Lebanese territories,” Suleiman said in a statement.