Voter turnout reached 45.08 percent in the first round of Lebanon’s municipal elections that was held in Mount Lebanon on Sunday, the Interior Ministry said.

Emirati citizens will be able to visit Lebanon as of May 7 after a ban imposed during a diplomatic row in 2021 was lifted, the official WAM news agency reported.

Hamas has handed over a militant suspected of firing rockets into northern Israel, the Lebanese Army said.

The Palestinian group turned over the suspect, who the Lebanese military only identified by the initials M.G., at the entrance of the Ain el-Helweh refugee camp, in the southern city of Sidon. The army says the militant was suspected of being involved in two rocket launches into Israel in March.

Lebanon on Sunday held the first stage of long-delayed municipal elections, the first vote since a devastating war between Israel and Hezbollah and after a new national government was formed.

Polling stations opened at 7:00 am Sunday across Mount Lebanon’s six districts, in the first round of Lebanon’s municipal elections.

Hezbollah chief Sheikh Naim Qassem has said that Hezbollah “cannot continue with the same pace in all the security, military, political and cultural fields,” promising “a comprehensive evaluation of the previous period.”

“We will work on facing these challenges with the continuation of the resistance as a liberation project and rejecting all forms of occupation, naturalization and normalization according to our available capabilities, while improving what we can, along with our allies, to confront these challenges in various ways,” Qassem added, in an interview with the pro-Hezbollah Eqtidar news portal.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will make an official visit to Lebanon on May 21, Kuwait’s al-Rai newspaper reported on Friday.

The army on Friday announced the arrest of two men who assaulted the imam of the mosque of the Mt. Lebanon town of Chbaniyeh in an incident apparently related to the sectarian violence between Druze and Sunnis in neighboring Syria.

President Joseph Aoun has stressed that the Lebanese Army is doing a “mighty job” and that its operations are still ongoing in the area south of the Litani River, despite the “geographic challenges and limited capabilities.”

In his latest meeting with the ambassadors of the five-nation group for Lebanon, Speaker Nabih Berri asked U.S. Ambassador Lisa Johnson and French Ambassador Herve Magro about their countries’ pledges regarding the ceasefire in Lebanon, reiterating that “Hezbollah has committed to the agreement while Israel is carrying out with its attacks,” a media report said.