Renowned Lebanese singer Wadih al-Safi passed away on Friday after a battle with illness.

Al-Safi, 92, died at Bellevue Medical Center in al-Metn's neighborhood of al-Mansourieh, al-Jadeed television reported.

The man allegedly behind the blasts that rocked the southern suburbs of Beirut in August was killed in Syria, the state-run National News Agency reported on Friday.

"Omar al-Atrash was killed in an armed ambush in the Naamat region in the Bekaa town of Arsal on the Lebanese-Syrian border,” the NNA said.

An army soldier was wounded on Friday as sniper gunfire erupted in Tripoli's Bab al-Tabbaneh, Jabal Mohsen and Syria Street, state-run National News Agency reported.

“Gunshots were heard between Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen and sniper activity is taking place around Syria Street,” NNA said.

Representatives of the U.N.-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon delivered Friday posters of the new accused Hassan Habib Merhi to the Lebanese authorities “for the purpose of public advertisement,” the court said in a statement.

“According to the Tribunal’s rules, the Lebanese authorities are requested to advertise the poster in the media to notify the public and to call on the accused to surrender to the Tribunal,” the STL added.

Senior officials of the Free Patriotic Movement and key members of the Change and Reform bloc demanded on Friday that an end be put to the extension of the term of state agencies and figures.

“We demand the election of a strong Christian president," they said in a statement read by MP Ibrahim Kanaan.

MP Oqab Saqr criticized on Friday Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat's claims that the March 14 camp, starting with Saqr, was the first to meddle in the Syrian crisis.

He said in a statement: “The PSP leader has recently resorted, in his contradictory remarks, to mentioning my name when it comes to Syria in order to justify Iran and Hizbullah's invasion of the country.”

Lebanese-U.S. director Ziad Doueiri said Friday he was willing to face jail to film his award-winning movie "The Attack" in Israel, flouting Lebanon's laws against entering the neighboring Jewish state.

Describing the production there as a "crazy trip", he told an audience at the Frankfurt Book Fair that it still bothered him that the movie, released this year, had been banned in the Arab world.

Prime Minister-designate Tammam Salam blamed on Friday politicians for his failure to form the new government although he said that he was still "devoted" to come up with a line-up.

In remarks to reporters at Baabda palace after talks with President Michel Suleiman, Salam said he “felt that politicians are not willing to remove the obstacles” facing the formation of the cabinet.

Free Patriotic Movement chief MP Michel Aoun accused Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Miqati on Friday of escaping his responsibilities rather than calling for a cabinet session to approve oil drilling decrees.

Describing Miqati as the “hero” of irresponsibility in oil exploration, Aoun said the caretaker PM “is escaping his responsibility in calling for an oil session and everyone is accusing the other of rejecting such a session.”

As part of a U.N. program to relocate Syrian refugees in Western countries, Germany has received on Thursday 106 Syrians who left Lebanon through Rafik Hariri International Airport heading to Berlin, escaping more than two years of bloodshed in their war-torn country.

“106 Syrian refugees most of whom are women and children, flew to Germany where they were accepted for temporary resettlement,”said Roberta Russa of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.