Police fired tear gas and made a number of arrests in Rome on Saturday as an anti-government protest turned violent, leaving several injured, according to medics and an Agence France Presse photographer.

Hooded protesters hurled rocks and firecrackers at police, causing some 20 injuries to officers, according to authorities.

Army Commander General Jean Qahwaji stressed on Monday that the military is determined to prevent the war ongoing in the neighboring country Syria from engulfing Lebanon.

Qahwaji expressed optimism over the future, pointing out that his visit to the Italian capital Rome is to tackle the bilateral ties between the army of the two countries, in particular ahead of a conference set to be held in Italy to support the capabilities of the Lebanese Armed Forces.

Italian leftist leader Matteo Renzi on Thursday called for a new government in his first direct challenge to Prime Minister Enrico Letta, who has so far refused to resign in an ongoing bitter feud between the two.

Renzi said there was "necessity and urgency of opening a new phase with a new executive" at the start of a key meeting of the leadership of his Democratic Party that is expected to decide whether to back Letta or Renzi.

Boxes containing pigs' heads have been sent to the Israeli embassy in Rome and the city's synagogue, Italian media reported Saturday.

The package mailed to the embassy in the wealthy Parioli area of the Italian capital was intercepted by police after other similar parcels were sent to the synagogue and the Jewish Museum of Rome.

A small explosive device went off outside a French church in central Rome, causing only material damage in an incident France's embassy to the Vatican said could be linked to President Francois Hollande's visit Friday.

"A handmade bomb went off at 2:30 am (0130 GMT), damaging three parked cars and the windows of a nearby building," a police spokesman told Agence France Presse.

An advisor to French President Francois Hollande was in Beirut on Friday for talks with top Lebanese officials on the $3 billion Saudi pledge to buy military equipment for Lebanon from France.

Emmanuel Bonne, who is Hollande's adviser on North Africa and the Middle East, arrived on a several day official visit. He will be joined in the next couple of days by Admiral Edouard Guillaud, the chief of the defense staff.

A dozen migrants who had sewn their mouths shut in an immigrant detention center outside Rome ended their protest on Friday, officials at the facility and a visiting parliamentary delegation said.

The last of the migrants taking part allowed medical personnel to remove the thread he had used to stitch his lips and the migrants also ended a hunger strike.

Pope Francis on Saturday paid a pre-Christmas visit to dozens of children at a Catholic pediatric hospital in Rome, observing a decades-old papal tradition.

Stopping in the hospital's chapel, the pope was given a basket containing handwritten messages from the children.

The heady years of artistic experimentation and cosmopolitan life in Rome in the 1970s are the subject of a new exhibition that opens in the Italian capital on Tuesday.

Two hundreds works by some of the most famous artists of the time, including Alberto Burri, Cy Twombly, Jannis Kounellis and Sol Lewitt are on show at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left for Rome on Sunday for a two-day official visit during which he will meet Pope Francis for the first time.

The Israeli leader took off around midday accompanied by six of his ministers, including his newly reappointed Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, public radio said.