President Joseph Aoun announced Thursday that the Lebanese state will continue with its arms monopolization plan.

Two people were killed Thursday in an Israeli drone strike on a van in the Hawsh al-Sayyed Ali area in the Bekaa.

An Israeli drone strike had overnight targeted a car in the southern town of Jannata, wounding one person, with Israel claiming that it struck a Hezbollah member.

Violent Israeli airstrikes on Wednesday targeted the Nmeiriyeh and Houmine valleys in south Lebanon, with the Israeli army claiming they hit Hezbollah rocket launchers and military infrastructure.

Israel has kept up regular strikes on Lebanon, usually saying it is targeting Hezbollah, despite a November 2024 ceasefire that sought to end more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah, which it accuses of rearming.

A former Syrian intelligence officer who was close to one of ousted ruler Bashar al-Assad's top army commanders was killed in Lebanon, a judicial official said, with the army announcing it had arrested a suspect.

Lebanese authorities are investigating the recent disappearance of a retired security officer whose brother was allegedly involved in the 1986 capture of an Israeli air force navigator, a Lebanese judicial official told AFP.

Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah and Amal MP Qassem Hashem met Tuesday with Qatar's Parliament Speaker Hassan bin Abdullah Al-Ghanem in Doha.

Al-Ghanem voiced Qatar's support and "love" for Lebanon and the Lebanese people.

Ministers convened Tuesday for, a second day in a row, to discuss a long-awaited banking draft bill that would distribute losses from the 2019 economic crisis.

The law stipulates that each of the state, the central bank, commercial banks and depositors will share the losses accrued as a result of the financial crisis.

The Israeli army on Tuesday claimed that a Lebanese soldier killed in a drone strike on a car in the Sidon district was also a Hezbollah operative.

It claimed the strike killed three Hezbollah members in total, “including one who served concurrently in the Lebanese Army's intelligence unit and another who was working with an air defense unit (belonging to Hezbollah) in the Sidon area.”

Hezbollah is no longer militarily present in the area south of the Litani River and monopolizing arms north of the Litani hinges on approving a national security strategy, sources close to Hezbollah told Al-Arabiya on Monday.

Army Commander General Rodolphe Haykal will meanwhile announce in early January the completion of the first phase of the arms monopolization plan, which is related to the South Litani region, sources told Al-Arabiya.

President Joseph Aoun on Monday told Italy’s visiting defense minister that the Lebanese Army is “the backbone of stability, not only in Lebanon but rather in the entire region.”

He explained that the region “automatically gets affected by the security situation in Lebanon.”