Tripoli police chief Brig. Gen. Bassam al-Ayyoubi on Thursday announced the launching of a crackdown on gunmen “who open fire in the air or attack citizens and their properties” in the restive northern city.

According to the National News Agency, Ayyoubi stressed that the Internal Security Forces, in cooperation with the army, will “strike with an iron fist.”

A Hizbullah official has announced that southerners will not accept to have U.N. peacekeepers among them who label them as "terrorists," in the wake of the European Union's decision to put the party's armed wing on its list of "terrorist" organizations.

“People are not going to accept you living among them and calling them terrorists,” a Hizbullah official said in an interview with the British newspaper the Financial Times.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea on Thursday accused Hizbullah of dragging Lebanon into “an inferno of fire and iron” through its military intervention in Syria.

“Hizbullah is a mini-state inside the Lebanese state and this mini-state is obstructing the rise of an active and real state,” Geagea told an LF expat delegation.

Five Lebanese were killed on Thursday when two vehicles collided near the southern city of Tyre, the state-run National News Agency reported.

NNA said that three people were also injured in the accident while a baby, who was in one of the cars, hasn't been found yet.

President Michel Suleiman urged on Thursday the Lebanese Army and UNIFIL leaderships to expand the investigation into the infiltration of an Israeli patrol into southern Lebanon.

Suleiman's request came in an attempt to study in detail the circumstances of the infiltration that took place early Wednesday to add the information to a complaint that Lebanese authorities plan to file with the U.N. Security Council.

The General Security base at al-Arida border crossing in the North was on Thursday reopened and traffic was back to normal, four days after coming under attack by angry residents.

The General Directorate of the General Security Department said Wednesday that it was still investigating the attack under the supervision of the military prosecution.

Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani warned on Thursday against strife and called for unity among Sunnis despite being snubbed by the sect's top political leaders.

Qabbani made the appeal during his Eid al-Fitr sermon at the Mohammed al-Amin mosque in downtown Beirut. No officials attended the prayers.

Caretaker Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour has warned that Lebanon would confront Israelis “bats” with landmines after four soldiers were injured following an incursion into Lebanese territories early Wednesday.

“They have their bats and we have landmines,” Mansour told As Safir newspaper published Thursday.

Prime Minister-designate Tammam Salam shied away from lauding Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat's latest stances, which he said have always changed the balance of power in Lebanon.

Jumblat's latest remarks “draw attention,” Salam told As Safir newspaper published on Thursday.

Singer-turned Salafist Fadel Shaker, who has gone into hiding since his involvement in clashes between Islamists and the Lebanese army in June, has appeared at an Iftar at the Ain el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in the South, security sources said.

The sources told pan-Arab daily al-Hayat published on Thursday that Shaker is residing at al-Taamir neighborhood of the camp that lies near the southern city of Sidon where the gunbattles took place.