U.S. envoy Morgan Ortagus on Tuesday held meetings with President Joseph Aoun and Speaker Nabih Berri and was scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Nawaf Salam.

A Presidency statement said Aoun emphasized the need to activate the work of the Mechanism ceasefire monitoring committee, especially in terms of “halting the continuous Israeli attacks on Lebanon and implementing Resolution 1701 in the South to enable the Lebanese Army to complete its deployment up to the southern international border.”

The Syrian interior ministry said Tuesday it seized about 11 million captagon pills in the southern countryside of Homs.

The pills were smuggled in a car coming from Lebanon, Syria's national news agency said.

The European Union condemned Tuesday an Israeli attack that targeted Sunday a UNIFIL detachment, "the latest in a series of similar incidents in recent weeks."

In a statement, the EU recalled that the safety and security of U.N. personnel and premises must be ensured in accordance with international law and U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701.

Two brothers were killed Monday in an Israeli drone strike that targeted a sawmill on the outskirts of the souhtern town of al-Bayyad in the Tyre district, the National News Agency said.

Israeli strikes over Lebanon had recently intensified amid scrambles to hold a tense ceasefire that ended Israel's war on Lebanon last November, and mounting pressure on the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea on Monday blasted Speaker Nabih Berri again over the issue of the latter’s refusal to put a bill allowing expats to vote on the agenda of Tuesday’s legislative session.

“What Speaker Berri is doing represents a blatant violation of the constitution’s rules and (parliament’s) bylaws and an attack on the rights of the parliamentary majority, which is no longer acceptable,” Geagea said.

U.S. envoy Morgan Ortagus on Monday arrived in Lebanon for talks with Lebanese leaders and participation in a meeting for the Mechanism ceasefire monitoring committee.

Ortagus had visited Israel on Saturday and Sunday.

The Lebanese Forces-led Strong Republic parliamentary bloc has announced its boycott of Tuesday’s legislative session, warning that participation in it would reflect “submission to Speaker Nabih Berri’s hegemony over parliament.”

“It would be a cover-up for a constitutional and ethical crime against hundreds of thousands of Lebanese expats who are facing an attempt to deprive them of their right to contribute to changing the situations through ballot boxes,” the LF bloc said.

The United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, began Monday a visit to Israel as part of her regular consultations with stakeholders key to the implementation of United Nations Security Council resolution 1701 (2006).

Hennis-Plasschaert is set to meet with senior Israeli officials for discussions on recent developments, particularly those related to the implementation of resolution 1701 and the November 2024 Cessation of Hostilities arrangement.

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil said he sees no problem in having direct negotiations with Israel after Hezbollah "lost its power to defend Lebanon."

Bassil said Hezbollah committed a strategic mistake when it started firing at Israel in support of Gaza and Hamas following the Oct.7 attack and that the group later lost the legitimacy of its weapons when it gave twice a vote of confidence to the government of Nawaf Salam, which vowed to disarm the group.

Egyptian Ambassador to Lebanon Alaa Moussa met Monday in Baabda with President Joseph Aoun on the eve of a visit to the country by a senior Egyptian security delegation.

“The meeting was important and represented a chance to present Egypt’s evaluation of what the region is witnessing, especially after the ceasefire in Gaza and the subsequent developments,” Moussa said.