The Israeli army was carrying out a military drill on Monday evening in the occupied Shebaa Farms, amid high tensions that started with the assassination of Hizbullah top operative Samir al-Quntar in a Syria air raid blamed on Israel.

“A series of explosions were heard in the towns of al-Orqoub during a maneuver for the Israeli enemy's army on the eastern peripheries of the occupied Shebaa Farms,” Lebanon's National News Agency reported.

A Lebanese expert has been called to Cyprus to examine whether confiscated artifacts seized from a vessel were illegally taken from a shipwreck, officials said on Monday.

Cypriot Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides said it was not sure if the artifacts had been taken inside the exclusive economic zone of Cyprus or that of Lebanon, so an expert had been called in.

More than 120 rebels and wounded from the flashpoint Syrian border town of Zabadani traveled Monday from Beirut's airport to Turkey as part of a U.N.-backed truce.

A convoy carrying them had earlier in the day crossed from Syria into Lebanon through the Masnaa border crossing.

An army soldier was killed and four troops were wounded Monday in a clash with members of the Jaafar family in the Bekaa area of Dar al-Wasaa, state-run National News Agency reported.

The exchange of gunfire erupted as the army carried out a raid linked to the 2014 murder of Sobhi and Nadimeh Fakhri in the nearby town of Btedei, NNA said.

Airport police thwarted at dawn an attempt to smuggle two kilograms of narcotics through the Rafik Hariri International Airport, the state-run National News Agency said on Monday.

The assailant, a Brazilian national, tried to smuggle the drugs to Lebanon from Brazil through Ethiopia, NNA added.

A delegation from the Association of Banks in Lebanon will visit Washington and New York in January, following a U.S. law that imposed sanctions on banks that “knowingly” do business with Hizbullah, An Nahar daily reported on Monday.

The delegation will be headed by the ABL chief Joseph Tarabay.

Speaker Nabih Berri stressed that the initiative to end the political deadlock “is still alive,” reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Monday.

“The presidential elections are facing internal obstacles because foreign powers have approved the proposal,” he explained according to his visitors.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi said that the patriarchate accepted the recently launched initiative to end the presidential deadlock as a “dynamic and not a candidate, who should be decided by the political leaderships,” reported An Nahar daily on Saturday.

“The election of a president should not be part of a comprehensive settlement, but a head of state should be elected first and discussions can then be held over other affairs,” he told a Hizbullah delegation over the weekend revealed the daily.

A toddler girl was killed Sunday by a gunshot from a hunting rifle in the Bekaa region of Baalbek, state-run National News Agency reported.

“The body of the child Nagham Abbas al-Outa, 8, was transferred to the state-run hospital in Baalbek with a gunshot wound to the neck from a hunting rifle,” NNA said.

Al-Mustaqbal bloc chief ex-PM Fouad Saniora stressed Sunday that the March 14 coalition will remain united despite the differences that emerged over MP Suleiman Franjieh's presidential nomination, as he lamented that a probe into the 2013 assassination of ex-minister Mohammed Shatah has not made much progress.

“Shatah believed in the Lebanon of the state of law and equality and he called for the implementation of the Taef Accord,” said Saniora at a ceremony commemorating Shatah at the Mohammed al-Amin Mosque in downtown Beirut, which was attended by Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea and other March 14 leaders and officials.