Former Interior Minister Nohad Machnouq appeared in court Thursday for the first time before judge Tarek Bitar who is investigating the 2020 Beirut port explosion, a judicial source told AFP.

The catastrophic blast on August 4, 2020 -- one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history -- devastated large parts of Beirut, killing more than 220 people and injuring over 6,500.

Information Minister Paul Morcos said Thursday that Lebanon has recorded 2,740 Israeli violations of the ceasefire.

Morcos said in a press conference following a cabinet meeting that 190 people have been killed and 485 injured in Lebanon by Israeli strikes since the ceasefire began.

The ministers of the Lebanese Forces on Thursday reiterated their call for setting a timeframe for the handover of Hezbollah’s weapons, Industry Minister Joe Issa al-Khoury said.

Israel was supposed to fully withdraw from Lebanon under a ceasefire reached in late November after more than a year of fighting. Israeli forces withdrew from villages in southern Lebanon but stayed in five "strategic" overlook locations along the border inside Lebanon.

The Israeli army also continued to carry out strikes against what it says are militant targets and Israel's defense minister said Wednesday that Israeli troops will stay "indefinitely" in "security zones" in Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, and Syria.

An Israeli drone strike targeted a motorcycle Thursday in the southern town of Aitaroun, killing one person, according to the Health Ministry.

The Lebanese army has increased its deployment in the country’s south over the past few months, confiscating Hezbollah’s arms and dismantling its positions under the terms of a U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement between the militant group and Israel, according to Washington Post interviews with PM Nawaf Salam, Lebanese military officials and diplomats.

An ordinary Cabinet session kicked off Thursday morning at the presidential palace in Baabda.

The Israeli defense minister says his country's troops will stay in "security zones" in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Syria indefinitely, after Israel unilaterally expanded its frontiers in the war unleashed by Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

Israel says it needs to hold on to the zones to prevent similar attacks, but the takeovers appear to meet the dictionary definition of military occupation.

Qatar is sending scores of military vehicles to the Lebanese army and a new, $60 million donation to help it pay salaries to officers as the small Mediterranean country recovers from the fighting in Hezbollah's latest war with Israel, the two Arab countries announced Wednesday.

Gas-rich Qatar has been a main backer of the Lebanese army since an unprecedented economic crisis engulfed the country in late 2019. Qatar was first sending food aid for the military while cash donations began in 2022.

The Lebanese army has arrested several people suspected of firing rockets at Israel from Lebanon, with a security official telling AFP that three Hamas members were among those held.

Despite a November 27 ceasefire that sought to halt more than a year of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, including two months of all-out war, rockets were fired at Israel on March 22 and 28.