A volley of shots rang out outside the U.S. Capitol building on Thursday, sending lawmakers and tourists scattering for cover and triggering a massive security operation.

Police said one officer was hurt in a vehicle crash during the incident. An Agence France Presse photographer saw at least one person receiving emergency medical assistance on the north side of the complex.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun on Wednesday said he is not against the continued deployment of Hizbullah fighters in Syria “in the absence of a political solution” to the conflict, noting that resuming national dialogue before forming a new cabinet in Lebanon would be “fruitless.”

“We have recently proposed a plan for the refugees and said that the solution does not lie in bringing donations to keep them in the country, but rather to facilitate their return home as any region in Syria is twice as big as Lebanon and they can go to certain regions, whether they are with the opposition or with the regime,” said Aoun during an interview on NBN television.

Yemeni Foreign Minister Abubaker al-Qirbi said on Wednesday that the exiled former South Yemeni president is living in Beirut under the protection of Hizbullah.

Qirbi's comments came as he was criticizing Ali Salem al-Baid in an interview in pan-Arab Al-Hayat newspaper.

The Change and Reform parliamentary bloc on Tuesday called for “practical solutions” to the social, economic and security problems created by the Syrian refugee influx, urging real “neutrality” in the Syrian conflict.

“It is not enough to say that you're against the issue of Syrian displacement and that it poses dangers. It is not enough to demand funds from foreign parties. Those who want to confront it must propose practical solutions, such as our suggestion on closing the border,” said MP Ibrahim Kanaan after the bloc's weekly meeting in Rabieh.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem noted Monday that his government is fighting a war against al-Qaida-linked militants who eat human hearts and dismember people while they are still alive, then send their limbs to family members.

Addressing world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Muallem also charged that the U.S., Britain and France had blocked the naming of the real perpetrators of chemical weapons attacks in Syria.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat lamented on Monday the poor state of affairs in the northern region of Akkar, saying that officials have neglected the impoverished area, whose suffering was highlighted in light of last week's sinking of an asylum-seekers' boat off the Indonesian coast.

He urged in his weekly editorial in the PSP-affiliated al-Anba website officials to “take immediate action that would send positive messages to the residents of Akkar.”

The death toll from the sinking of an Australia-bound asylum-seeker boat off Indonesia rose to 39 Monday, an official said, although it was not yet clear the number of Lebanese who died in the incident.

The boat, which was estimated to be carrying between 80 and 120 Middle Eastern asylum seekers, went down on Friday in rough seas off Indonesia's main island of Java. It was headed for Australia's Christmas Island.

Australia on Sunday insisted it provided "all appropriate assistance" to an asylum-seeker boat that sank off Indonesia, as the death toll rose to 28 people, the majority of them Lebanese.

The vessel, carrying an estimated 120 asylum-seekers from Lebanon, mainly from the town of Kabiit in Akkar, Jordan and Yemen, sank in rough seas Friday.

At least 60 Lebanese migrants drowned on Friday as they attempted to sail from Indonesia to Australia, reported Voice of Lebanon radio (93.3).

It said that no more than ten people survived the trip between the two countries and the corpses of the victims began to wash ashore on one of the Indonesian islands.

Jihadist fighters linked to al-Qaida set fire to statues and crosses inside churches in northern Syria Thursday and destroyed a cross atop the clock tower of one of them, a watchdog said.

Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) entered the Greek Catholic Church of Our Lady of the Annunciation in the northern city of Raqa and torched the religious furnishings inside, the Syria Observatory for Human Rights said.