Chairing his first Tripartite meeting with senior Lebanese and Israeli officers, UNIFIL Head of Mission and Force Commander Major General Aroldo Lázaro expressed his hope to use the forum "to move beyond the delivery of statements to emphasize finding solutions."

The UNIFIL Head made the comments at a meeting held in Ras al-Naqoura, Lebanon.

Former Justice Minister and newly elected MP Ashraf Rifi has said that he will not be within the Lebanese Forces parliamentary coalition, but will be an ally.

Rifi told Nidaa al-Watan newspaper, in remarks published Thursday, that he will take part in a "broad sovereign and patriotic front that refuses Hizbullah's weapons and Iran's hegemony."

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea on Thursday disputed Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s announcement that “no camp has the parliamentary majority,” noting that the LF and the so-called change forces are a majority seeing that they agree on “sovereignty” and on opposing corruption and Hizbullah’s arms.

“The elections results were resounding and Hizbullah and the Free Patriotic Movement lost the majority,” Geagea said at a press conference that followed a meeting for the LF’s Strong Republic bloc.

When Firas Hamdan was injured at a protest near Lebanon's parliament two years ago, the then activist never imagined he would one day return as a lawmaker.

Hamdan, one of 13 independent politicians who emerged from a mass anti-government protest movement in 2019, made it to parliament on a reformist platform at elections on Sunday.

On Thursday, bags of Arabic bread were being sold on black market for up to LBP30,000 per bag, the National News Agency said, as stores and supermarkets in Nabatiyeh only received a scarce quantity.

Six mills had stopped operating, according to Antoine Seif, the head of the Syndicate of Bakery Owners in Mount Lebanon, as the central bank failed to pay for wheat at the silos.

A blast was heard on the southern border Thursday as Israel said it accidently fired interception missiles due to a "misidentification."

"No drone had crossed from Lebanon," the Israeli army said.

Consumed daily by billions of people around the world in bread and other flour-based products, wheat is a basic food staple, making current record prices for the cereal a global concern. 

Low rainfall or droughts in major producing countries were already causing worries before Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February sent markets soaring.

Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah announced Wednesday that the fact that the parliamentary elections did not produce a clear parliamentary majority might be a good thing for the country in the wake of the polarization that accompanied the electoral campaigns.

Lebanon was witnessing a host of renewed crises on Wednesday against the backdrop of a continuous surge of the dollar exchange rate on the black market.

“The flour crisis will grow and we will witness more queues outside bakeries,” Ali Ibrahim, the head of the Syndicate of Bakery Owners in Lebanon, told al-Jadeed TV, amid a shortage of Arabic bread in the market.

The central bank has extended the implementation of Circular 161 until the end of July, allowing banks to continue to purchase dollars via the Sayrafa platform, Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh announced on Wednesday.

The circular, which has been in place since January, allows commercial banks to buy U.S. dollars from the central bank with the Lebanese pounds that they or their clients have, based on an exchange rate specified by the Sayrafa platform, which is usually lower than that of the black market.