The door has been closed on the ability of candidates running for the municipal and mayoral elections in the South to withdraw their nominations, the state-run National News Agency reported on Tuesday.

Requests to draw back nominations of candidates running for the municipal elections next Sunday were closed at midnight, NNA.

The alliance between the Free Patriotic Movement and the Lebanese Forces is working "very well", sources of the LF told An Nahar daily on Tuesday.

“Our alliance with the FPM is at its best although it is still tender. Efforts to shake it will go in vain,” unnamed sources told the daily.

France announced Monday that it is seeking to hold an “international conference” aimed at helping Lebanon resolve its “constitutional and political crises.”

A municipal list running for the upcoming municipal polls in the South has won uncontested in the village of Bnaafoul, the state-run National News Agency reported on Monday.

The list is backed by the AMAL movement and Hizbullah party and is comprised of 12 seats.

Secretary General of al-Mustaqbal Movement Ahmed al-Hariri announced that the movement backs a list headed by current municipal chief of Sidon, Mohammed al-Saudi, for the upcoming municipal polls, the state-run National News Agency reported on Monday.

“Al-Saudi deserves a lot because he is the son of Sidon. He made many accomplishments for this city which he was able to put on the road to modern development when we put our hand in his hand,” said Hariri in a popular gathering organized by youth of the Hay Maksar al-Abed in Sidon.

Prime Minister Tammam Salam emphasized that the banking sanctions file against Hizbullah is a sensitive issue that must be kept away from the media spotlight, As Safir daily reported on Monday.

Salam has voiced calls “to keep the issue away from political deliberations and from the media because it is an important and critical file that has specific circumstances,” the daily quoted visitors to the PM.

The second round of Lebanon's municipal elections are set to kick off in Mount Lebanon on Sunday following mostly successful polls held a week earlier in the capital Beirut and in the Bekaa and Baalbek-al-Hermel district.

The elections are the first vote of any kind in Lebanon since the last municipal polls in 2010.

Hizbullah party stated that takfiri groups were responsible for killing the party's top military commander Mustafa Badreddine in Syria in an artillery attack, the party's al-Manar TV said on Saturday.

“An investigation has shown that the blast that targeted one of our positions near the Damascus international airport that led to the martyrdom of the brother commander Mustafa Badreddine was caused by artillery bombardment carried out by takfiri (Sunni extremist) groups present in that region,” a Hizbullah statement said.

The Association of Banks in Lebanon (ABL) is set to hold a special meeting on Saturday to discuss the U.S. law that targets the sources of funding of Hizbullah which triggered dismay among the party's officials.

The meeting will be chaired by the ABL chief Joseph Tarabay and comes after Hizbullah's Loyalty to the Resistance parliamentary bloc criticized the central bank for saying it would abide by a U.S. law that came into effect last month and which the party's lawmakers said violates Lebanon's sovereignty.

The United States announced Friday that U.S.-led aircraft did not overly the Syrian area where Hizbullah's top military commander Mustafa Badreddine was killed in a mysterious blast.