A few municipalities in Mount Lebanon began on Friday collecting garbage as a temporary solution to a growing environmental crisis in the hot summer season that erupted after the closure of the Naameh landfill south of Beirut last week.

The number of municipalities, which met the demands of Environment Minister Mohammed al-Mashnouq, were however limited.

Preliminary investigations into the kidnapping of five Czech citizens in Lebanon last week suggest the case is criminal, Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq said on Wednesday.

"We've arrived at the beginning of the end of the thread (of investigations), and it relates to mafias, drug trafficking and weapons," the official National News Agency quoted him as saying.

Kataeb party leader MP Sami Gemayel stressed on Wednesday that the time has come for popular accountability against the dump collecting company Sukleen “which has been taking Lebanon hostage for over 20 years.”

“The contract of Sukleen was extended several times since the last tender in the 1990s until today. It is time for popular accountability for a company that has been taking Lebanon hostage for over 20 years,” said Gemayel in a press conference on the waste management crisis.

Residents of the southern town of al-Kfour held a sit-in on Wednesday blocking the road leading to the town's landfill and forbidding dump trucks from emptying their loads, the National News Agency said.

“Our sit-in is open until the landfill is closed completely. It has become a source of diseases and insects of various kinds. All the land surrounding the landfill has become barren and the poison accumulating affects all neighboring areas,” the residents of the town that lies in the Nabatieh district complained.

Progressive Socialist party chief Walid Jumblat stressed on Monday that Lebanon will not be able to confront the financial challenges if the waste of state funds is not controlled.

“Lebanon will not be able to confront the economic and financial challenges if it does not pull itself together and conduct radical and urgent reforms to stop the waste of money in various sectors mainly the energy sector, customs, ministries and several others,” he said in his weekly editorial in the PSP-affiliated al-Anbaa website.

Lebanese authorities are searching for five Czechs feared kidnapped in the eastern Bekaa Valley, a military source and the state-run National News Agency said Saturday.

The five, along with their Lebanese driver Munir Taan, a resident of Nabatiyeh, have been missing since Friday night, when their car was discovered in the Kefraya region in the western part of the Bekaa.

French ambassador to Lebanon Patrice Paoli stated on Tuesday that the international agreement to preserve Lebanon's stability can only be achieved through Lebanon's army and security forces, As Safir daily reported.

“There is no such thing as an international umbrella and we have never said that. In reality there is an international understanding U.N. Security Council to preserve Lebanon's stability,” said Paoli in an interview to the daily.

U.S. prosecutors have tried to link a prominent businessman in the State of Iowa to a scheme in which four defendants are charged with using his shipping company facilities to smuggle weapons to Lebanon.

Bill Aossey Jr. had been in contact with the suspects, one of whom is a close friend, and is shown on surveillance video briefly going into one of the containers after it was packed, prosecutors in Cedar Rapids argued Monday.

Malala Yousafzai told world leaders they were failing Syria's children, as the Nobel Peace Prize winner spent her 18th birthday Sunday in Lebanon near the Syrian border.

As she became an adult, the teenager, who was shot by militants in her native Pakistan for campaigning for girls' rights, opened a school for more than 200 Syrian girls living in refugee camps in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.

Prime Minister Tammam Salam stressed on Sunday that he will not let the attempts to obstruct the cabinet succeed in their endeavors, calling on all parties to keep political differences away.

“I will not allow any attempts to obstruct the cabinet's work. Let them keep their political differences away from the government,” said Salam during a meeting with popular delegations at his residence.