Contact are ongoing to convince the Phalange Party to withhold its threat to resign from Premier Tammam Salam's government over the new Cabinet's policy statement as it is impeding the agreement between the political arch-foes.

According to An Nahar newspaper published on Sunday, the cabinet will receive a total of 110 lawmakers out of 128 ill grant Salam's government the vote of confidence despite the Lebanese Forces parliamentary bloc's decision to withhold it and the forced absence of Head of al-Mustaqbal Movement MP Saad Hariri and his bloc's lawmaker MP Oqab Saqr from the parliamentary session.

Armed clashes renewed on Sunday afternoon in Tripoli, shattering a cautious calm that had engulfed the city since dawn, as a number of MPs, Muslim clerics and figures called for a ceasefire and rejected attacks on the army.

“Clashes have escalated between Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen and the army is shooting at the sources of gunfire,” al-Jadeed television reported in the evening.

The Phalange party warned late Saturday that the ministers representing it in Prime Minister Tammam Salam's government will resign before a parliamentary vote of confidence if the policy statement wasn't amended.

Following a more than four-hour meeting held at its headquarters in Saifi, the Phalange politburo said: “The resignation of the ministers are linked to an official and serious solution to the dangerous confusion on the role of the state and its authority in deciding the fate” of the nation.

Three people were killed on Saturday in the latest round of clashes between the rival neighborhoods of Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen in the northern city of Tripoli, reported the National News Agency.

The fighting had eased on Saturday morning as intermittent gunshots could be heard in the city but it intensified at night in most of the hotspots.

An inmate at the prison of the eastern city of Zahle escaped on Saturday from Riyaq hospital, the state-run National News Agency reported.

Mohammed Wajih al-Dennawi was on his way for an X-ray at the hospital when he escaped, NNA said.

Israeli soldiers opened fire Saturday at "suspects" who approached the border with Lebanon, a military spokeswoman said.

"A certain number of suspects approached the Israel-Lebanon border. Soldiers fired in the air to warn them away, and they moved off," she said.

One person was killed and at least two others injured on Saturday after several rockets fired from the eastern mountain range landed on Shiite towns in the Bekaa Valley, the Lebanese army and the state-run National News Agency said.

A boy named Abbas Saleh Saifeddine died in al-Nabi Othman while two others were wounded in al-Labweh, NNA and media reports said.

A military expert defused on Saturday mortars found in a vehicle stopped by the army in the northern district of Akkar, the military and the state-run National News Agency reported.

NNA said that the army stopped the silver Renault at a checkpoint at the entrance to the town of Shadra.

Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri noted on Saturday that the government policy statement that was drafted on Friday does not grant one party or power authority over that of the state.

He said in a statement: “Several interpretations can be made over the policy statement, but one central truth is clear and that is there can be no return to the 'army-people-resistance' equation.”

Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil signed on Saturday letters of credit to Electricite du Liban in order to purchase fuel oil needed to preserve the electricity supply in Lebanon, reported LBCI television.

EDL officials had warned earlier this week that the government's failure to legitimize the release of funds by the finance ministry to buy the fuel would have detrimental effects on electricity.