Greek Orthodox leader Youhanna X Yazigi has stressed that the election of a new president in Lebanon would create stability and help the authorities confront the regional turmoil.

Yazigi, who is the Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, expressed regret that Lebanese lawmakers have failed to elect a successor to President Michel Suleiman, whose term ended in May.

The Lebanese government is mulling to ask the anti-Islamic State coalition to expand its operations to the Lebanese-Syrian border area from where extremists are carrying out attacks on the Lebanese army, a report said Friday.

High-ranking political sources told the Kuwaiti al-Seyassah newspaper that the cabinet is studying to officially ask the coalition to carry out air raids on the IS and al-Qaida-linked al-Nusra Front militants.

Lebanon will file a complaint at the United Nations over the Israeli shelling on Lebanese territories and the death of a Spanish peacekeeper with the U.N. force in southern Lebanon, media reports said on Friday.

According to al-Akhbar newspaper, Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil asked Nawaf Salam, Lebanon's Permanent Representative to the U.N., to file the complaint.

The health ministry Thursday shut down 13 meat shops in Sabra in the ongoing food safety campaign.

In an official statement, the health ministry announced that “a group of inspectors raided meat shops and warehouses in Beirut's Sabra area.”

A young man who killed a 66-year-old lady last week committed his crime with the aim of robbing her money and purchasing drugs, the Internal Security Forces announced on Thursday.

Two other women were wounded in the knife attack in the northern town of Bakhoun in the Dinnniyeh district.

The government on Thursday called for avoiding a full-blown war with Israel, a day after a Hizbullah operation killed two Israeli soldiers in the occupied Shebaa Farms, as it agreed to increase the number of the Internal Security Forces' personnel after managing to find a “middle-ground solution.”

“The cabinet discussed the situations in the South and some ministers expressed their stances in a calm debate during which all parties showed keenness on avoiding a deterioration,” Information Minister Ramzi Jreij announced after a cabinet session at the Grand Serail.

Chairman of Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Alaeddin Boroujerdi arrived in Lebanon on Thursday a day after Hizbullah launched an attack against an Israeli convoy in the occupied Shebaa Farms that left two Israeli troops dead.

He expressed upon his arrival in Beirut his congratulations to Hizbullah on its operation, which was in retaliation to an Israeli airstrike on January 18 on Syria's Quneitra region that left six party members and an Iranian general dead.

The March 14 alliance on Thursday urged the Lebanese people to back the government of Prime Minister Tammam Salam and ask it to take into its own hands the decision of war and peace.

Following a meeting, the alliance's general-secretariat encouraged “the Lebanese to stand united behind their government, and ask it to defend them and hold onto the decision of war and peace.”

The General Directorate of State Security detained in the eastern city of Zahle on Thursday an abduction gang that is specialized in smuggling Syrians into Lebanon.

The gang reportedly smuggles Syrians into Lebanese territories and kidnaps people in exchange for ransom.

Prime Minister Tammam Salam has received assurances from Arab and Western diplomats that the clashes which took place between Israel and Hizbullah following an attack on an Israeli military convoy would not lead to a full-fledged war.

Salam's visitors were quoted as saying on Thursday that the Prime Minister, who made contacts with the diplomats after the clashes, received guarantees that the international community will exert every effort to preserve stability in Lebanon.