The Hizbullah leadership in the South and top members of Amal in Jabal Amel backed on Saturday Syrian President Bashar Assad’s reform efforts which they said aim at consolidating the country against foreign plots.

Following a meeting they held at Hizbullah’s offices in Tyre, the two sides said in a statement that the attempts to target Syria’s stability and the unity of its people and army are aimed at hindering its support for the Palestinian people and their right to liberate their land.

A 52-year-old Lebanese identified as Habib Youssef Hashem was found stabbed to death in his hotel room in the Nigerian capital Lagos, the National News Agency said Saturday.

The parents of Hashem, who hails from the town of Hasbaya, urged the foreign ministry to cooperate with the Lebanese embassy in Lagos to investigate his murder and help them take the necessary measures to repatriate his body.

A severe snowstorm lashing Lebanon since Friday has caused considerable damage to crops, blocked major roads and downed power lines in several areas.

Strong winds in the northern district of Akkar blocked the international highway of al-Abdeh-Abboudiyeh after it toppled trees. The residents later reopened it.

British Ambassador Tom Fletcher has expressed hope that the Lebanese government and officials would be united in their stance in distancing themselves from the Syrian crisis.

“The messages of President Michel Suleiman and Premier Najib Miqati in that regard have been very clear and have been welcomed by us,” Fletcher told As Safir daily in an interview published Saturday.

Speaker Nabih Berri stressed that he hasn’t launched a new initiative to resolve the cabinet crisis but sources have said that he discussed with Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun ways to find a solution to the controversial transportation allowance that was at the origin of the government’s deadlock.

Berri hinted to As Safir daily on Saturday that he isn’t making any mediation between Aoun and Premier Najib Miqati, who suspended cabinet sessions on Feb. 1 after he bickered with ministers loyal to the FPM chief and accused them of hindering the government’s work.

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat said Saturday that Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah should have announced his backing for the Syrian people rather than defending the Assad regime.

“I would have hoped that for Syria’s sake he would directly address (President) Bashar Assad and tell him that Syria is more important” than anything else, Jumblat told As Safir daily.

The renewal of the protocol signed between the Lebanese government and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon will likely take effect soon after Beirut failed to make its observations, al-Liwaa daily reported Saturday.

The newspaper said that a document calling on the U.N. Security Council to renew the tribunal’s mandate became part of the official U.N. documents on Friday at around 5:00 pm New York time and will likely be approved soon if the Council expresses no reservations on it.

The Permanent Military Tribunal headed by Brig. Gen. Nizar Khalil on Friday sentenced to death Haitham al-Sahmarani, a retired Internal Security Forces first sergeant, on charges of collaboration with Israel.

Upon his arrest in 2009 Sahmarani confessed to collaborating, along with his wife, with the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency.

Civil Defense teams evacuated on Friday a building in the Sidon district in southern Lebanon.

The building, Jana Omari, was evacuated after some parts of it collapsed, reported MTV.

U.S. State Department special coordinator on Middle East affairs Frederick Hof’s brief visit to Lebanon focused on Lebanon’s oil and gas wealth and its attempts to drill for them in the Mediterranean, political sources told the Central News Agency on Friday.

They added that he was impressed by Lebanon’s thorough evaluation of the file, especially the army’s assessment of the issue, which it supported with all the necessary documents.