The Lebanese Army on Friday said it has detained five people in the northern city of Tripoli as they prepared to smuggle 85 migrants by boat to Europe.

The army said the smugglers were detained late Thursday as they were preparing to send 85 people on a boat after collecting a total of $400,000 from them. The boat was confiscated in a sea resort in the country's north, it added, and the detainees are being questioned.

The United Arab Emirates has released a Lebanese physician after holding him for more than three weeks over a tweet he published years ago, a person familiar with the case said.

The case of Dr. Richard Kharrat came to attention in early April when local media reported that he went missing from his hotel in the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi.

General Security said Thursday it has stopped taking appointments for passport renewals because of a rush that has depleted stocks of new passports.

Since 2020, requests for passport renewals have been ten times higher than in previous years, which has piled pressure on passport centers and "affected available passport stocks," General Security said in a statement.

Prime Minister Najib Miqati and U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon Najat Rochdi signed Thursday the “United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework” (UNSDCF).

The framework is meant to strengthen the existing and ongoing cooperation between both parties on promoting the principles of sustainable development, and build the foundations for a prosperous and inclusive Lebanese society, where no one is left behind, the U.N. said in statement.

A parliament session for looking into a request for withdrawing confidence from Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib was adjourned Thursday due to lack of quorum.

After the session was cancelled, Lebanese Forces MP George Adwan accused Free Patriotic Movement Jebran Bassil of being the "de facto foreign minister," saying that his consultant Pascale Dahrouj is the one organizing the elections instead of Bou Habib.

Ex-PM Fouad Saniora has warned against “falsifying the will of the Lebanese and the people of Beirut,” following talks with Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Daryan.

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil has said that Lebanon’s political system is “paralyzed” and “cannot be sustained.”

In an interview with al-Mayadeen TV aired overnight, Bassil added that he believes that “there is integration between the project of protecting the arms that protect the state” and “the priority of building the state.”

Lebanese rescue teams searched the Mediterranean by helicopters Thursday for dozens of bodies still missing at sea, after an overloaded people-smuggling boat capsized near Tripoli's coast.

Some family members of the boat victims accompanied the rescue teams, while the hunt also continued by sea and land for the fifth consecutive day.

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil is keen on holding a Parliamentary session to discuss withdrawing confidence from Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib, OTV said Thursday.

The TV station said that Bassil wants the session to be held, "despite that some parties are trying to strip the session of its quorum."

A Lebanese Army post in the Wadi Khaled border town of al-Majdal was on Wednesday targeted by heavy gunfire from the Syrian town of al-Maajir, al-Jadeed TV said, after an Islamic State-linked fugitive was killed earlier in the day by Lebanese military intelligence agents.