Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat on Monday noted that resigned Public Works and Transport Minister “cannot act on his own,” after the latter said he was stepping down from his duties in the caretaker cabinet.

“Aridi belongs to a party and he cannot act on his own,” Jumblat said in an interview with LBCI television.

A Lebanese soldier, who went missing after a shooting on an Israeli army unit on Sunday night, has returned to his post, the state-run National News Agency reported.

NNA and Voice of Lebanon radio (93.3) said that the soldier reported to duty in Naqoura on Monday morning after hiding in a bush throughout the night.

A child died on Sunday in a fire that erupted at a Syrian refugee camp in the Ras al-Ain region south of the southern city of Tyre, reported the National News Agency.

It said that one-and-a-half-year-old Hammoudeh Omar al-Kamel was killed in the fire that erupted due to faulty electrical wires.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat has said that he would visit Syria only if the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad collapses and the country is “liberated.”

In remarks to French-language daily L'Orient Le Jour, Jumblat said: “Neither I nor my son have planned for a single moment to go to Damascus.”

Syrian opposition leader Ahmed Jarba on Tuesday appealed for urgent help for the Syrian opposition and civilians as he took part in the opening session of the 34th Gulf Cooperation Council Summit in Kuwait.

"The Syrian people need you today to tell the whole world that the Syrian regime will have no future in the country," said Jarba, who also thanked Kuwait for launching an "aid fund" without providing any details.

The Trial Chamber of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon has scheduled the start of trial in the case of Ayyash et al. for Thursday, January 16, 2014, announced the STL in a statement on Tuesday.

It explained: “This decision has been made after consulting the parties to the case at the Trial Chamber’s last public hearing.”

Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah opened an annual summit of wealthy Gulf states on Tuesday with a call for an end to the "human catastrophe" in Syria.

Sheikh Sabah, who gave a share of the spotlight at the Gulf Cooperation Council summit to the head of Syria's main opposition bloc, also condemned the United Nations for failing to halt the 33-month conflict.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun on Monday denied accusations by Syrian rebels that the FPM has sent fighters to protect Christian places of worship in Syria, saying the claims might be a prelude to a “hostile act” against him.

“I was surprised by the claims and I would've done that publicly if I had the intention,” Aoun said during an interview with MTV, stressing that he does not have a “militia.”

President Michel Suleiman stated on Saturday his rejection of all foreign intervention schemes, adding that illegal arms have become a tool of destabilization in the country.

“The issue of the Lebanese identity has drawn foreign interference and it was only the result of local mistakes,” Suleiman said in a speech he gave at an event to unveil the busts of the 12 Lebanese presidents that have ruled the country since its independence in 1943., noting that Saturday's meeting aims at reviving “the cause.”

A group of nuns reportedly abducted from Syria's Maalula appeared Friday in a video broadcast by Al-Jazeera television, in which they reassured that they are in good health and would be released “in two days.”

“We are fine. We're staying at a beautiful villa and we'll leave in two days,” says one of the nuns in the video.