A Lebanese expatriate in Abidjan succumbed to his wounds on Wednesday after sustaining gunshot wounds, the state-run National News Agency reported.

According to NNA, 40-year-old Mohammed Malek, who hails from the southern village of Beit Leif, was severely wounded after unknown assailants opened fire at him during a burglary.

An Israeli infantry unit abducted on Wednesday a shepherd from the southern border town of Shebaa a day after two shepherds escaped when soldiers seized their flock of goats, the Lebanese army said.

The army and the state-run National News Agency said Ismail Khalil Nabaa was kidnapped and taken to the occupied Shebaa Farms area at dawn Wednesday.

The Lebanese army detained overnight a number of Syrian nationals suspected of having links with an an offshoot of al-Qaida, the military and the state-run National News Agency said Wednesday.

The army said in a communique that it seized 8 Syrians in the eastern border town of Arsal for illegal entry. Some of them were driving unregistered cars and motorcycles and are suspected of belonging to terrorist organizations, it added.

National Liberal Party leader MP Dory Chamoun rejected on Wednesday the extension of the parliament's term, accusing Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun of conspiring against Christians in Lebanon.

“Aoun is one of the conspirators against the Christians' existence in Lebanon and the orient as his actions harm the interests of Christians,” Chamoun said in comments published in the Kuwaiti al-Anbaa newspaper.

Lebanon's civil war ended a quarter of a century ago but its filmmakers remain fixated on this dark period, seeing their movies as a kind of catharsis to help heal collective trauma.

The industry's focus contrasts sharply with a society that has yet to come to terms with its devastating past, where war has marked the last five generations -- and each community, be it Christian or Muslim, looks back through a different lens.

A high-ranking Hizbullah official was killed on Monday in the ongoing battles between the party's fighters and Syrian opposition militants in Syria's al-Qalamoun region, which is strategically located on the border with Lebanon.

The clashes also took the lives of three other Hizbullah fighters.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat blasted Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea and Free Patriotic Movement head MP Michel Aoun once again on Tuesday, denying that he discussed the presidential impasse with Speaker Nabih Berri or Hizbullah chief Sayyed Nassan Nasrallah.

"Let those among Christian figures who are holding onto their posts be reassured that we did not discuss the presidential vote with (Berri and) Sayyed Hassan,” Jumblat said after holding talks with the speaker in Ain el-Tineh, hitting out at Geagea and Aoun.

Hamas has said it hopes Hizbullah will open a new front from southern Lebanon against Israel, which is currently embroiled in a deadly confrontation with the Palestinian movement in the besieged Gaza Strip.

“We hope the Lebanese front will be opened so that we can fight this entity (Israel) together,” said Moussa Abu Marzouq, deputy head of Hamas' political bureau.

Four Syrian nationals were wounded on Tuesday afternoon in Syrian raids on the Arsal plains in the Bekaa.

LBCI television said that four Syrians were wounded when Syria's jets raided the house of mayor Ali Melhem al-Hujairi in Arsal's Wadi Ajram region.

An Israeli force on Tuesday seized a flock of goats from the southern border town of Shebaa, as two shepherds managed to escape a possible kidnapping attempt.

"An Israeli force seized a goat flock that belongs to shepherds Mohammed Khalil Nabaa and Khodr Hamdan from the Sadana mountain heights in Shebaa,” the state-run National News Agency reported.