Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Thursday described the ceasefire agreement reached with Israel as “a sort of an executive mechanism for the implementation of Resolution 1701.”

“Our priority is to reach long-term stability and the election of a president,” Mikati added.

The co-chair of the ceasefire monitoring mechanism, U.S. Maj. Gen. Jasper Jeffers, held talks Thursday with Speaker Nabih Berri.

Jeffers was accompanied by a U.S. military delegation and U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Lisa Johnson.

Speaker Nabih Berri, who had called for parliament to convene to elect a president next month, is optimistic that a president will be elected on January 9, a prominent parliamentary source told Kuwaiti newspaper al-Anbaa.

The source said, in remarks published Thursday, the vote would likely be held in open sessions. "If that wasn't Berri's intention, he wouldn't have invited ambassadors to the session."

Israeli artillery shells targeted Lebanese Civil Defense crews as they were removing rubble and searching for bodies in Naqoura on Thursday.

The head of the Lebanese Forces’ dept. in Karm al-Zeitoun, Roland Murr, was killed overnight in an armed clash with the Soldiers of God group in Ashrafieh, media reports said.

The army deployed in the area afterwards and started pursuing those involved in the clash.

Israel’s army said it had struck a launcher in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, one week after the start of a ceasefire with Hezbollah.

"A launcher that was identified in Majdal Zoun in southern Lebanon, violating the agreements between Israel and Lebanon and posing a threat to the State of Israel, was struck by the (Israeli Air Force)," the military said in a statement, adding it had also "dismantled weapons" in three locations of southern Lebanon.

The Lebanese Army, which is busy with the implementation of the ceasefire agreement in the south with Israel, finds itself facing a no less important task on the northern border with Syria.

The advance of armed factions, specifically Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and allied factions in Aleppo and the Hama countryside, as well as their arrival to the outskirts of Hama city, has prompted the Army Command to “mobilize to take preventive measures for fear of extremist groups reaching the Lebanese border or the movement of sleeper cells inside the country,” Asharq al-Awsat newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Wednesday that Israel is “still in the middle of a war” and that Iran is its “main enemy.”

Hezbollah MP Hussein al-Hajj Hassan told al-Jadeed TV on Wednesday that “all of Hezbollah’s institutions are licensed and under the law, especially al-Qard al-Hassan.”

Near gaping holes where walls used to be, workers at a center for women and children in south Beirut assess the damage after a nearby Israeli strike devastated their facility.