The Central Security Council held Friday an emergency meeting at the Grand Serail, a day after angry protesters blocked roads across the country and smashed windows and set tires on fire outside banks in Beirut, as the value of the local currency hit a new low.

After the meeting, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati asked if the activists who burned tires in front of the banks are "real depositors," suggesting that they might have received instructions to do what they did.

The Lebanese woke up terrified on February 6 as a 7.8-magnitude quake centered in Turkey jolted them from beds, shaking buildings for about 40 seconds.

Many residents of Beirut left their homes and took to the streets or drove in their cars away from buildings, terrorized by memories of the 2020 port explosion that wrecked a large swath of the city.

Three soldiers and three fugitives were killed Thursday during a Lebanese Army raid aimed at arresting durg barons in the Bekaa town of Hawrtaala, the army said.

Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Thursday warned the United States against seeing to stir “chaos” in Lebanon, warning that such an upheaval would spread to the entire region.

Financial Prosecutor Judge Ali Ibrahim on Thursday pressed charges against 22 money changers of whom 18 are in custody.

A magnitude-4.6 earthquake struck the Syrian coast at 1:15 pm Thursday and was felt in Lebanon, the director of Lebanon’s National Center for Geophysics, Marleine Brax, said.

Protestors, on Thursday, blocked roads in Badaro, burned tires and tried to smash the windows of some banks in the area, as banks closed their doors to customers amid an unprecedented economic crisis.

The angry protestors set fire in front of Fransabank and Bank Audi by burning tires. The fire was later extinguished by firefighters of the Beirut Fire Brigade.

Caretaker Energy Minister Walid Fayyad has stressed that gasoline will not be priced in USD.

Responding to a warning from station owners that they would go on strike unless gasoline is priced in USD, Fayyad told LBCI TV that “the Ministry is working on a platform in order to issue more than two price tables per day in order to catch up with the exchange rate fluctuations.”

Demonstrators in northern Lebanon on Wednesday blocked several roads in protest at the unprecedented dollar rate surge and the dire economic situations.

The body of Lebanese citizen Elias Haddad has been recovered from the rubble of a destroyed hotel in the earthquake Turkish city of Antakya.

The announcement was made by the Cedars-11 team of Lebanese Civil Defense volunteers, which had traveled to Turkey at its own initiative.