A blaze broke out Friday in a fireworks depot near the Kuwaiti embassy in the capital Beirut.

Civil defense firefighters struggled to contain the flames as the sounds of explosions echoed across the area.

Dozens of relatives of Islamist prisoners detained in Lebanon's notorious main prison of Roumieh on Friday blocked the international highway linking the northern city of Tripoli to neighboring Akkar and the Syrian border, demanding the government to urgently “settle the cases of their detained relatives, who have been in jail for four years without a trial.”

The protesters called for “filling the vacancies in the Judicial Council panel, to which the Fouad Saniora government had referred dozens of cases following the al-Tal and al-Bohsas bomb attacks” against army troops.

Two members of the Islamist Jund al-Sham group on Friday made an attempt on the life of the chief of Palestinian Armed Struggle in the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp Mahmoud Issa, aka al-Lino, Voice of Lebanon Radio (93.3) reported.

“While Palestinian national Mahmoud Abdul Qader and another Jund al-Sham member were planting a bomb near al-Lino’s house in the camp, they were spotted by the latter’s bodyguards, who shot and wounded the two,” the radio network added.

Syria’s banned Muslim Brotherhood on Friday lashed out at Prime Minister Najib Miqati, accusing him of “siding with the killers of Syrian children.”

In a statement published by the Italian news agency AKI, the Brotherhood’s official spokesman Zuheir Salem said “the Syrian people would never compromise, no matter the sacrifices, the blood of our brothers in Lebanon, whether in Tripoli, Beirut, Sidon … or anywhere in Lebanon.”

Phalange party leader Amin Gemayel warned Hizbullah on Friday against attempts to target the March 14-led opposition saying its project is doomed to failure.

“Hizbullah should be aware that its project is doomed to failure,” he said at the opening of the 29th Phalange conference. “We stress to Hizbullah that no one in Lebanon wants to target it but we don’t accept that it turns its arms against us.”

Energy Minister Jebran Bassil described parliament’s adoption of a draft law on the delineation of Lebanon’s maritime border as an “achievement,” saying however, it was now time for the cabinet to issue decrees paving way for the exploration of oil and natural gas in the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone.

Bassil told As Safir daily published Friday that Premier Najib Miqati’s government should commit to its policy statement and issue the decrees that would give licenses for international companies to explore oil.

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon probing the assassination of ex-Premier Rafik Hariri will take new procedures before the end of August, al-Liwaa newspaper reported on Friday.

STL’s Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare obtained new information on the case, the daily said.

Estonia has paid a 5 million dollar ransom to win the release of the seven Estonian tourists kidnapped in the Bekaa valley in March, the French publication Intelligence Online has reported.

Citing a source close to Lebanese intelligence, the publication said that the Estonians had been kidnapped by mistake, and that the real goal of the hostage-takers was to nab citizens of a Western country with large interests in the Middle East.

Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour said that Lebanon’s stance at the U.N. Security Council comes out of his conviction that the country shouldn’t adopt any resolution that condemns Syria, As Safir newspaper reported on Friday.

“I believe that we shouldn’t adopt any resolution that condemns Syria, to ensure the security and stability of the two countries,” he stressed.

President Michel Suleiman has warned that the democratic changes in the Middle East should lead to improvement of Lebanon’s democratic performance.

During a meeting with a huge delegation from the Shouf area at his summer residence in Beiteddine, Suleiman said: “The security stability is one of the blessings of the democracy in Lebanon where Christians and Muslims live in a single democratic system and where all take part in political life.”