Detained suspect Sheikh Omar al-Atrash denied on Monday claims that he had transported booby-trapped vehicles to Lebanon, reported LBCI television.

It said that he confessed to only transporting weapons from Lebanon to Syria.

The Phalange Party hailed on Monday the release of the Maalula nuns, stressing the importance of restoring the Syrian town to its residents.

Labor Minister Sejaan Qazzi stated after the party's weekly politburo meeting: “We will not stand idly by against the conspiracy against the Christians.”

The trial of 19 Belgians on terrorism charges began Monday under tight security amid concerns the 15 men and 4 women were part of a local jihadist recruitment network.

They face charges of either fighting alongside jihadist groups in Somalia, having attempted to go to Somalia or Syria, or of having provided support to a Belgian-based recruitment operation.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat praised on Monday the release of the Maalula nuns, hoping that security agencies will put an end to abductions in Lebanon.

He said in his weekly editorial in the PSP-affiliated al-Anbaa website: “All security agencies should be on alert to end the phenomenon of kidnappings in Lebanon.”

A Canadian photojournalist, Ali Mustafa, has been killed in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, activists said.

An official in the Aleppo opposition provincial capital said Mustafa, a freelancer who sold pictures to the SIPA and EPA agencies, was killed in the city on Sunday.

The Syrian army has been using starvation as a "weapon of war" in its siege of the Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus, Amnesty International said Monday.

In a report on the plight of Palestinian and Syrian civilians in Yarmuk, the rights watchdog said nearly 200 people have died since an army siege was tightened in July 2013 and access to food and medicine cut.

A group of nuns abducted from the Syrian town of Maalula in December were released on Sunday evening and handed over to a Lebanese General Security delegation in the outskirts of the Bekaa border town of Arsal.

"The Maalula nuns have been freed and they are now in our custody," General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim told LBCI television.

Syria's seat at the Arab League will remain vacant until the opposition completes the formation of its institutions, the pan-Arab group's secretary general Nabil al-Arabi said on Sunday.

"The last Arab summit in Doha in March 2012 adopted the principle of granting Syria's seat within the League to the opposition, but it has not yet established its institutions and must take further steps in this regard," Arabi said after a meeting of the Arab Ministerial Council.

Two thousand demonstrators gathered on the Greek island of Crete on Sunday to protest against the planned destruction of Syria's chemical weapons in the eastern Mediterranean, an Agence France Presse reporter said.

Despite pouring rain at the port of Souda, crowds brandishing black flags demanded more information about the international operation.

A number of rockets fired from the Syrian side of the border landed in the northern region of Akkar, reported the National News Agency on Sunday.

The rockets, fired at dawn, landed in the towns located near the Kabir, or Grand, River near the Lebanese-Syrian border.