A tense calm prevailed in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on Friday after rioters set fire to several government buildings, capping days of violent clashes as anger over growing poverty made worse by the coronavirus lockdown boiled over.

The authorities deployed more troops in the country's second-largest city in an effort to quell the rioting, which has led to repeated confrontations with security forces in which one person was killed and more than 250 others were injured.

Samer Kabbara, a young nephew of MP Mohammed Kabbara, has officially announced his nomination for Tripoli's fifth Sunni seat, which became vacant after the Constitutional Council revoked Dima Jamali's parliamentary membership.

“The way in which Dima Jamali was imposed” on the city in the 2018 elections was “wrong,” Kabbara said in an interview with al-Akhbar newspaper published Monday.

A student was hospitalized on Wednesday after being beaten by a school principal in the northern city of Tripoli, reported MTV.

Mahmoud Merhi, 15, was beaten by the principal and later thrown down the stairs by the principal after he was involved in a fight with his son, said the victim's friend, who was at the scene.

The Islamic State has resorted to forming “cluster cells” of members in order to expand its ranks and adopting religious “brainwashing” to recruit new members, reported As Safir newspaper on Thursday.

Widely informed sources told the daily: “Confessions of some detainees have revealed that the IS has effective religious and security bodies that brainwash youths, who are mainly teenagers, in order to turn them into terrorist extremists within two months.”

A Lebanese man who hails from the northern city of Tripoli has been killed while fighting alongside jihadists in the Syrian border town of Kobane, reports said Monday.

They said Alaa al-Hosni, a resident of the Tripoli neighborhood of Bab al-Tabbaneh, died as he and other Islamic State group militants fought with fighters in Kobane, a Kurdish town.

Tripoli municipality chief Nader Ghazal assured on Thursday that no “religious reasons” were behind removing beer ads in the northern city, explaining that this was instead due to legal violations committed by advertising companies.

Ghazal's declaration came during a visit to Kataeb Party MP Sami Gemayel, accompanied by Tripoli MP Samer Saade.

The Internal Security Forces Intelligence Bureau raided on Monday a warehouse in the northern city of Tripoli, confiscating a number of weapons, reported the National News Agency.

It said that an ISF Intelligence Bureau patrol raided the warehouse, belonging to A.N., in the al-Soweiqa al-Mahatra neighborhood, seizing a number of rocket-propelled grenades, Energa-type rockets, bombs, and light and medium weapons.

Unknown gunmen shot a resident of the Tripoli district of Jabal Mohsen on Friday evening, in an assault that is likely linked to the wave of sectarianly motivated attacks that has rocked the city in recent months.

“Omran Suleiman was shot in the legs on al-Mallouleh road in Tripoli,” OTV reported.

Caretaker Interior Minister Marwan Charbel urged on Wednesday all powers to cooperate in implementing a security plan in the northern city of Tripoli, similar to other plans in other areas in Lebanon that are aimed at ending the phenomenon of autonomous security.

He said after a Central Security Council meeting: “The Tripoli security plan is aimed at protecting it from local and external threats.”

Fugitive Islamist cleric Ahmed al-Asir on Tuesday warned Christians that bombings might target their areas, citing Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's latest speech, in which he said that Takfiris might target any Lebanese region with the aim of inciting strife.

In a new audio recording uploaded to the Internet, Asir extended condolences to “our people in Tripoli, (Syria's) Ghouta and Egypt,” in reference to the twin bombings that left 45 people dead and more than 500 injured in the northern city and the alleged chemical attack near Damascus.