Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil on Monday held talks at the Grand Serail with Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

The National News Agency said the discussions tackled “the general economic and financial situations.”

The Israeli army on Monday resumed drilling and barricading works near the military road that is adjacent to the electronic border fence opposite the Lebanese al-Wazzani park, Lebanon’s National News Agency said.

An Israeli military patrol meanwhile combed the military road next to the border wall between the Israeli settlement of Metulla and the hills of the Lebanese town of Adaisseh.

President Michel Aoun on Monday praised the latest reconciliations between political parties, and urged the Lebanese not to have any fear for the future, the National News Agency reported.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s media office refuted claims on Monday published in Hizbullah’s al-Akhbar newspaper about Lebanon’s military cooperation with Russia.

Progressive Socialist Party leader ex-MP Walid Jumblat on Monday said that dialogue with Hizbullah has restored normalcy thanks to Speaker Nabih Berri’s efforts.

Former US Defense Secretary James Mattis accused Iran of the 2005 assassination of ex-PM Rafik Hariri as he highlighted the threats posed by the Persian country in the region.

Lebanese Army female soldier Aya Kh. was shot Sunday by her brother in the southern town of Rmeish.

The National News Agency said the soldier was admitted into the surgery room of the Hammoud hospital in Sidon after being shot in the chest by a gun.

MP Salim Aoun of the Strong Lebanon bloc said Sunday that the Progressive Socialist Party has lost its “bets,” stressing that no one has sought to “besiege” PSP chief Walid Jumblat in recent months.

“The PSP has lost its bets domestically and externally,” Aoun said.

Industry Minister Wael Abu Faour of the Progressive Socialist Party hoped Sunday that the meeting that was held in Laqlouq between Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil and Democratic Gathering head MP Taymour Jumblat will push the FPM leader to “reevaluate his rhetoric.”

“His rhetoric has inflamed tensions in Lebanon,” Abu Faour noted in a radio interview.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri is “a man who is as big as a nation” and he will not get entangled in “narrow politics,” a minister said on Sunday.

“He will certainly not stand idly by to watch the country sink,” Telecommunications Minister Mohammed Choucair said.