Three soldiers were injured on Monday during a clash with gunmen in the northern city of Tripoli as they deployed in their neighborhood, part of a security plan in the capital of the North.

One of the soldiers was badly wounded after gunmen from the district of Bab al-Tabbaneh opened fire on them. The army responded to the sources of fire as the soldiers deployed heavily in the area.

Syria has freed 64 women prisoners this week, or half the number expected to be released under a weekend hostage deal, a human rights activist said Thursday.

Nine Lebanese pilgrim hostages held for 17 months by a rebel group in northern Syria were exchanged on Saturday for two Turkish pilots abducted in Lebanon in August.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Miqati condemned on Thursday the renewal of clashes between the rival Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen neighborhoods in the northern city of Tripoli, saying that its residents feel like pawns in regional schemes.

He said after holding a security meeting with President Michel Suleiman on the latest developments in the city: “There is no other option for Tripoli but resorting to the state.”

Creepy crawlies, in the form of a venomous spider infestation, has forced a school in Britain to close a week before Halloween.

The Dean Academy, a secondary school in southwest England's Gloucestershire, said it was closing Wednesday to get rid of the false widow spiders. The spiders are commonly mistaken for their relative, the black widow spider, whose bite can be fatal.

An attack by rebels near Damascus has caused a power outage across Syria, state news agency SANA quoted the electricity minister as saying.

"A terrorist attack on a gas pipeline that feeds a power station in the south has led to a power outage in the provinces, and work to repair it is in progress," Emad Khamis said.

The injury toll from Wednesday's clashes between the rival Tripoli neighborhoods of Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen rose to eight in the evening, with no sign of the fighting dying down.

“A man called Ahmed al-Basha was wounded in the al-Baqqar as gunfire was heard on the fighting frontiers of Bab al-Tabbaneh, al-Baqqar, al-Rifa and Jabal Mohsen,” state-run National News Agency reported.

The Phalange party on Monday urged national leaders to “get liberated” from their political stances and form a new cabinet to deal with the pending crises in the country.

"The country cannot handle more stalling and procrastination,” the party's political bureau said in a released statement after its weekly meeting.

Four rockets struck the Bekaa city of Hermel on Monday after they were fired from Syrian territory, Agence France Presse quoted a security source as saying.

"Four rockets launched from inside Syrian territory hit separate areas of the town of Hermel," which lies some 10 kilometers from the border with Syria, the source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Two Turkish pilots kidnapped near Beirut's airport in August were shown in a video broadcast by LBCI television on Tuesday, saying they wished they could be back home.

The video showed Murat Akpinar and Murat Agca both saying they were in good health but adding that they wished they could be home with their families for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha that began on Tuesday.

The family of Monsignor Mansour Labaki urged on Saturday Christian figures in the country to intervene with high authorities at the Vatican to allow an appeal in the case of the Maronite father.

Labaki was charged by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican with sexually abusing several minors, LBCI television reported on Tuesday, quoting the French magazine La Croix.