Cyprus police have applied to hold a young Lebanese man for a further week over allegations he was helping to plan an attack on Israeli tourists, media on the island reported on Friday.

The 24-year-old, who holds a Swedish passport, appeared at a closed-door hearing on Friday and a court in the island's second city Limassol will decide on Monday whether he should remain in custody, the reports said.

Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani revealed on Friday that Lebanese gunmen have deployed along the Lebanese-Syrian border to prevent refugees “fleeing their country’s massacres” from entering Lebanon.

He therefore demanded during the Friday Muslim prayers from the president, speaker, and prime minister that the border between the two countries be opened to the refugees.

The Free Patriotic Movement refused on Friday to apologize over MP Michel Aoun’s remark that slain Sheikh Ahmed Abdul Wahed had liquor bottles in his car at the time of his death, rejecting Dar al-Fatwa’s demand for the apology.

The FPM press office said in a statement: “God has granted Aoun with the courage to say the truth and the courage to apologize when he has made a mistake.”

The Pentagon said Friday there are signs that Hizbullah may have orchestrated a suicide bombing attack on Israeli tourists in Bulgaria this week.

"The attack does bear some of the hallmarks of Hizbullah but we're not in a position to make any final determination on who was responsible," Pentagon press secretary George Little told reporters.

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat criticized Hizbullah for announcing that it is premature for political leaders to discuss the national defense strategy because the party is still in the liberation stage.

“I’ve heard a statement from MP Mohammed Raad that there would be no surrender of arms before liberation. I object to that because the Lebanese state is the side that decides the liberation of Shebaa farms and Kfarshouba hills through the means that it sees fit,” Jumblat told a delegation of Arab journalists.

Marada leader Suleiman Franjieh is mediating between Speaker Nabih Berri and Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun to bridge their differences, As Safir daily reported on Friday.

The newspaper said that Franjieh visited Berri in Ain el-Tineh on Thursday following talks he held with Aoun in Rabieh.

Special Tribunal for Lebanon spokesman Marten Youssef hailed on Friday a decision by an STL judge to set March 25 as the tentative date to start the trial in absentia of four suspects and stressed new evidence should be provided to ask for a change in that date.

In remarks to al-Joumhouria daily, Youssef said Pre-Trial Judge Daniel Fransen’s decision “is a unique opportunity for the international tribunal and the Lebanese people and is an important step on the road to trials.”

Up to 30,000 Syrians have fled into Lebanon over the past 48 hours, the U.N. refugee agency said on Friday.

"Thousands of Syrians crossed into Lebanon yesterday. Reports vary between 8,500 and 30,000 people having crossed in the past 48 hours," UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told reporters in Geneva.

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat supported the demand of the March 14 coalition for the government to provide the so-called telecom data to security agencies to prevent future plots against Lebanese politicians.

In remarks to As Safir daily published Friday, Jumblat justified the opposition’s demand to hand over all telecom data including the International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) to security bodies by saying “they have witnessed assassination attempts and the involved (telecom) minister (Nicolas Sehnaoui) is obstructing the data.”

Dar al-Fatwa, the highest religious Sunni Muslim authority in Lebanon, on Thursday announced that Friday will be the first day of the holy month of Ramadan, as the Higher Islamic Shiite Council declared that Ramadan will start on Saturday.

The holy month will begin on Friday in most Arab countries, religious authorities announced, but in Oman and Syria as well as for Iraq's Sunni Muslims and in non-Arab Iran it will start on Saturday.