Hezbollah’s “Christian relations” official Mohammed Saeed al-Khansa and Hezbollah official Abdullah Zaiour met Thursday with Maronite League chief Khalil Karam at the League’s headquarters.

Congratulating Karam over his election as the new head of the League and offering Christmas and New Year greetings, the two Hezbollah officials held a lengthy discussion with Karam over the situation in Lebanon.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri sent Thursday a message of condolence to his Irish counterpart and to UNIFIL head Aroldo Lázaro, after an Irish soldier of the U.N. peacekeeping force in south Lebanon was killed and three were wounded as their convoy came under fire.

"With great sorrow and great sadness, we learned the news of the soldier's death," Berri told Seán Ó Fearghaíl, as he strongly condemned the "unfortunate" incident.

Ministers from the various political parties will meet on Friday to discuss the work of the caretaker government in light of the latest standoff between the Free Patriotic Movement and the rest of the government’s components.

“A consultative ministerial meeting will be held tomorrow at 4pm at the Grand Serail to discuss the issue of mending the governmental rift and finding solutions for the current disputes,” MTV reported.

Hezbollah coordination and liaison officer Wafiq Safa urged Thursday not to involve Hezbollah in an attack that killed an Irish member of the UN peacekeeping force and wounded three others.

Safa told LBCI that the incident was unintentional, sending his condolences for UNIFIL and wishing recovery to the three wounded members.

The Foreign Ministry and caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned Thursday an attack on a UNIFIL convoy in southern Lebanon.

Mikati expressed his "deep regret" after an Irish UNIFIL member was killed and three others were wounded near the village of Al-Aqbiya after their convoy came under fire.

Lebanon's divided parliament failed to elect a new president Thursday for a tenth time, despite the damage the political deadlock is doing to efforts to bail out its bankrupt economy.

Parliament is split between supporters of Hezbollah and its opponents, neither of whom have a clear majority.

William Noun and Maria Fares met during a moment of grief two years ago after each of them lost a sibling in Beirut's massive port blast. Their shared pain developed into a bittersweet love story: Earlier this month Noun proposed to Fares and she said yes.

Noun's late brother, Joe, and Fares' late sister, Sahar, were both firefighters who rushed to the port on the evening of Aug. 4, 2020 after a fire broke out in one of the warehouses. Sahar Fares was a paramedic with the force.

An Irish member of the U.N. peacekeeping force monitoring south Lebanon near the Israeli border was killed and three wounded after their convoy came under fire, U.N. and Irish sources said Thursday.

The British Ambassador to Lebanon, Hamish Cowell, has announced a £13 million commitment to “support the Lebanese Armed Forces’ (LAF) resilience from 2022 till 2025 in a Memorandum of Understanding signed with LAF Commander in Chief General Joseph Aoun,” the British embassy said.

Cowell, with the U.S. Ambassador, Dorothy Shea, and the Canadian Ambassador, Stephanie McCollum, met General Aoun during the High Level Steering Committee to discuss security on the Lebanese-Syrian border.

Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah will meet with ex-president Michel Aoun and Free Patriotic Movement leader Jebran Bassil upon the latter’s return from Qatar, informed ministerial sources said.

The meeting will likely be held within a week to “put an end to the crisis between the two parties,” the sources told ad-Diyar newspaper in remarks published Wednesday.