Security forces increased their presence around protest centers in central Beirut Wednesday, after several nights of violence disrupted two months of largely peaceful anti-government demonstrations.

Assailants attacked the office of a Sunni Muslim religious leader in the northern city of Tripoli, smashing in windows early on Wednesday, the National News Agency reported.

Prominent Shiite cleric Ali al-Amin lashed out at Hizbullah on Wednesday after the latter’s accusations that he is “normalizing ties with Israel.”

Army chief General Joseph Aoun reportedly warned many Lebanese officials of the “revolution of the hungry,” saying the military can not do much to prevent the “genuinely poor class” when they take to the streets in protest at dire economic conditions, media reports said Wednesday.

U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale is expected to visit Beirut on Thursday in line with Lebanon’s parliamentary consultations to name a new prime minister, media reports said on Wednesday.

A bodyguard of caretaker Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil on Tuesday snatched the cellphone of a prominent journalist during a U.N. forum in Geneva, the journalist said.

“Lebanese FM Jebran Bassil had his security confiscate my phone and erase the video when I was trying to interview him at UN Refugees forum in Geneva,” Lebanese-German journalist Jaafar Abdul Karim tweeted.

Caretaker Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil on Tuesday warned the international community, especially European countries, that “hundreds of thousands of Lebanese, Syrians and Palestinians” might flee to Europe should Lebanon turn into another “Syria.”

Speaking at an international conference for refugees at the U.N. headquarters in Geneva, Bassil urged the world to stand by Lebanon and “prevent its collapse.”

The Central Criminal Investigations Bureau will interrogate AMAL Movement supporter Abbas al-Shami, who has received and shared a video deemed insulting to Shiites following a Facebook feud with a Lebanese man who lives in Europe.

LBCI television said the interrogation will take place under the supervision of the public prosecution.

Anti-corruption protesters on Tuesday stormed the headquarters of the Chamber of Commerce, Industry & Agriculture in Sanayeh during a meeting attended by caretaker Telecom Minister Mohammed Choucair.

The protesters expressed their rejection of any privatization of the mobile telecom sector and the costs of telecom services in Lebanon.

U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jan Kubis on Tuesday warned Lebanon’s political leaders that “blocking a sustainable political solution” will only lead to further violence and sectarian “provocations.”

In a series of tweets, Kubis said he was “alarmed to hear about the increasingly complex & dangerous security situation around the protests” from caretaker Interior Minister Raya al-Hassan, Army chief General Joseph Aoun and Internal Security Forces chief Maj. Gen. Imad Othman.