Forty percent of Lebanese hold a favorable opinion of Hizbullah, which receives its highest overall ratings in Tunisia from among six Muslim-majority countries, according to a poll published in the U.S.

But in Lebanon views about Hizbullah are sharply divided along sectarian lines: 94% of Shiites, 33% of Christians, and 5% of Sunnis give the group favorable marks, according to the survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in recent months.

Speaker Nabih Berri on Tuesday stressed that the Lebanese “cannot preserve national unity through consensual security, but rather through supporting the army.”

“We will not give up a single grain of our land's soil in the South and will not accept that our people remain a prey to (Israeli) tyranny,” Berri said in a speech he delivered at a ceremony to award him the Elias Hrawi prize for his role in preserving the National Pact.

The Change and Reform parliamentary bloc led by Free Patriotic Movement chief MP Michel Aoun on Tuesday stressed that “the judicial course must be respected in Sheikh (Ahmed) Abdul Wahed's case as well as the army's prestige.”

Change and Reform secretary MP Ibrahim Kanaan also told reporters after the bloc’s weekly meeting that “the timing of the state budget is important as we need to know what the government intends to spend, not only what it spent in the past.”

Hizbullah voiced on Monday its concern over Saudi Arabia’s actions against religious figures in the kingdom, the last of which was the “wrongful” arrest of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

It urged the Saudi authorities to “halt the undemocratic actions against the peaceful and legitimate demands of Saudi citizens,” calling on them to respect religious figures.

The residents of Beirut and the Lebanese coast felt on Monday a 5.6-magnitude earthquake.

Lebanon’s state-run Bhannes Center for Seismic and Scientific Research said that Beirut and its suburbs felt the minor quake, whose epicenter was located between Cyprus and the Greek island of Rhodes.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat condemned on Monday the assassination attempt against opposition MP Butros Harb, stressing the need for all the details in the crime to be uncovered.

He said in his weekly editorial in the PSP-affiliated al-Anbaa magazine: “The sides behind the crime or others have not learned that assassinations only increase the Lebanese people’s determination and attachment to their freedom and democracy.”

The European Union's top diplomat lashed out at Syria on Sunday over its deadly rocket fire along the border that left two girls dead and 10 other people wounded in the northern Lebanese area of Wadi Khaled.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton's office released a statement saying she "strongly condemns the recent shelling of the Lebanese border area by Syrian artillery, causing several deaths and injuries."

Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Awadh Asiri on Friday revealed that Saudi citizens were recently kidnapped and robbed in Lebanon, decrying the fact that the perpetrators remained at large although they are “well-known.”

“Some Saudis were kidnapped and robbed in Lebanon and the perpetrators were identified but have not been arrested until the moment,” Asiri said in an interview on MTV.

At least 55 people were killed across Syria on Friday as protesters took to the streets in several provinces after being urged to call for a "People's liberation war."

The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said regime forces killed 16 people in the countryside around Damascus, 11 in Daraa, nine in Idlib, eight in Homs, four in Damascus and two in Hama.

The March 14 forces on Thursday called on the government to “resign immediately” and called for referring the assassination attempts against Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea and MP Boutros Harb to the U.N.-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon.

In a statement issued after an emergency meeting at Harb’s residence in the wake of a failed attempt on his life, the March 14 forces also called on the government to immediately hand over telecom data linked to recent assassinations bids to the relevant security agencies.