Hizbullah deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem stated on Friday that the party was expecting to be the target of an attack like the one that took place in the Bir al-Abed neighborhood in Beirut's southern suburb of Dahieh on Tuesday.

He said on the seventh anniversary of the eruption of the July 2006 war: “The Dahieh blast is part of a plan to target the resistance and those backing Israel's agendas were behind it.”

President Michel Suleiman stressed on Friday that the current stage the country is passing through and the political and security developments compel everyone to have the necessary awareness and prioritize the national interest.

“The accelerated frequency of political and security developments locally and regionally impose on everyone to have the required awareness and prioritize the national interest,” Suleiman said.

Special Tribunal for Lebanon President Judge Sir David Baragwanath and Vice-President Judge Ralph Riachy have been re-elected for a period of 18 months, the STL announced on Friday.

The judges of the Appeals Chamber, who met on Thursday, re-elected both Baragwanath of New Zealand and Lebanese judge Riachy, for the same time period starting September 1, said the statement.

The Army Command announced on Friday that Israeli troops briefly crossed the Blue Line into Lebanon earlier in the morning before returning to Israel.

It said that five troops opened the technical gate at the southern region of Houla and then crossed the Blue Line for a brief time.

An Israeli soldier collapses onto the floor of a house in Lebanon, shot by Hizbullah fighters. As his squad mates clear out the second floor, a medic rushes over, pulling on latex gloves and digging into his first aid kit. Gunfire echoes down the stairs as he starts to work on the wound.

The Israeli military experienced this kind of brutal house-to-house warfare during its inconclusive 2006 war with Hizbullah. As it trains in a mock village in its base in the northern Israeli town of Elyakim, it is recreating similar battle scenarios as it prepares for the next confrontation with the Lebanese group. Officials say such a conflict could erupt at any time.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea condemned on Friday any terrorist act that aims at destabilizing the country, considering that Bir al-Abed neighborhood's blast is linked to Hizbullah's intervention in the conflict in the neighboring country Syria.

“We will have to confront a more dangerous situation if the party hold on to the its policies,” Geagea said in an interview with al-Liwaa newspaper.

Speaker Nabih Berri has snapped back at the March 14 alliance without naming it, saying the new government would not be formed without Hizbullah's participation in it.

In remarks to al-Joumhouria newspaper published Friday, Berri said it was impossible to form the government without having Hizbullah representatives in it.

Caretaker Interior Minister Marwan Charbel stressed on Friday that Lebanese security agencies are taking “precautionary measures” over the delicate situation that the country and the region are passing through.

“We don't need to obtain information from anyone over the matter to realize that the situation is critical,” Charbel told al-Akhbar newspaper.

When Ali Farhat was summoned to the immigration department in the United Arab Emirates, the 33-year-old Lebanese restaurant worker knew he would have to pack up his family and leave fast.

Like many Shiite Muslims working in the oil-rich Gulf state, Farhat says he popped up on the country's deportation radar merely because of his sect, which its Sunni rulers associate with Hizbullah.

A majority of Lebanese believe the influx of Syrian refugees in their country threatens national security, Norway's Fafo research foundation said in a report obtained on Thursday by Agence France Presse.

In the survey carried out by Fafo in late May, 900 people were interviewed across Lebanon, a country of more than four million people which now hosts around 600,000 Syrian refugees.