Former Central Bank governor Riad Salameh asserted in an interview with Al-Arabiya Business that he has become a “scapegoat” for the financial crisis that has plagued Lebanon in recent years, denying any connection to depositors' losses or the collapse of the banking sector.

Salameh stated that he is not implicated in any of the legal cases pending in Lebanon, France, or any other European country, noting that the Syrian war cost Lebanon $25-30 billion.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri denied, in remarks published Friday in ad-Diyar newspaper, that Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty warned Lebanon about an imminent escalation as he met with Lebanese leaders in Beirut Thursday.

"No threat was conveyed to us," Berri said, adding that the threats are coming from Israeli media and not from visiting envoys.

The commander of the South Litani sector of the Lebanese Army, Brigadier General Nicolas Tabet, announced Friday that the army does not coordinate with any local party in carrying out its operations within the South Litani region.

During a tour for journalists in the South Litani sector, Tabet emphasized that coordination is exclusively with the Army Command and that there has been "zero objection" from residents to the army's operations in the area.

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil has warned that “the country is facing significant challenges and dangers.”

“Those who promised the people reform and sovereignty are not implementing anything, and no one believes them, neither domestically nor internationally,” said Bassil during an annual FPM dinner in Beirut.

Through his series of meetings, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty is seeking a Gaza-like agreement for Lebanon that is theoretically supposed to halt Israel’s violations of Lebanon’s airspace and prevent the renewal of war, Cairo-based informed Egyptian sources said.

“Cairo and other mediators would give guarantees that Tel Aviv or any other Israeli city will not be targeted by Hezbollah, which will be supposed to hand over its weapons to the state according to a timetable whose implementation would coincide with supplying the Lebanese Army with the weapons that enable it to do its job,” the sources told al-Akhbar newspaper.

President Joseph Aoun rejected Thursday Israel's claims that the army is not doing enough to disarm Hezbollah in south Lebanon.

"These claims are baseless," Aoun said, adding that the ceasefire monitoring committee is "documenting what the army has done and is doing daily."

In the vein of U.S. President Donald Trump’s warning to Hamas prior to the signing of the Gaza agreement, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty carried a “clear and direct threatening message” to Beirut during his visit to the country, al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Thursday.

According to senior sources, officials in Lebanon had received days ago information about an Egyptian initiative based on “freezing the function of weapons and pledging not to carry out any hostile acts against Israel, in return for the start of withdrawal from some points occupied by the enemy and freeing a number of captives, in order to pave the way for the negotiations course.”

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said Thursday that Hezbollah failed to deter Israeli attacks on Lebanon or stop the Israeli war on Gaza.

"Their weapons did not protect their leaders nor the Lebanese people and their properties, and the proof of that is the dozens of levelled villages," Salam said.

The Israeli army carried out Thursday a series of airstrikes on the heights of the Iqlim al-Tuffah region in south Lebanon.

The strikes targeted al-Jarmaq and al-Mahmoudiyyeh, heights that Israel frequently targets despite a ceasefire reached last year.

Former Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat condemned Thursday a statement by the advisor of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, after other Lebanese politicians including LF leader Samir Geagea and Foreign Minister Youssef Rajji condemned what they described as an interference in Lebanese affairs.

Khamenei's adviser Ali Akbar Velayati had said Wednesday that "Hezbollah’s presence has become more necessary to Lebanon than water and bread," to which Geagea responded that Lebanon is a sovereign country and that Iran has no right to interfere in its affairs.