Beirut - Lebanon News - Breaking News

A Lebanese man killed his wife and then tried to commit suicide in the al-Koura district of northern Lebanon on Friday night, local media reported.

The reports said Saturday that Ahmed Khodr Salibi shot his wife, Giselle Hanna, with a Kalashnikov rifle in her head and chest in the town of Kfarqahel.

Phalange party leader Amin Gemayel slammed Interior Minister Marwan Charbel on Saturday for denying that an assassination attempt against his son MP Sami Gemayel had been thwarted.

In remarks to Voice of Lebanon radio station (100.5), Gemayel said: “I was shocked when I heard the remarks of the interior minister.”

Speaker Nabih Berri is not likely to make any mediation attempts between Premier Najib Miqati and Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun before the PM’s visit to Paris next week.

Al-Liwaa daily on Saturday quoted a Berri visitor as saying that a solution to the dispute between the two sides is not imminent.

Energy Minister Jebran Bassil stressed on Saturday that Premier Najib Miqati’s suggestion of candidates for posts reserved for Christians in state institutions during a cabinet session earlier in the week was “unconstitutional” and warned of reciprocity.

“We haven’t changed our stance in terms of the unconstitutionality of Miqati’s behavior either by holding onto the names that he suggested or by suspending the work of the government,” Bassil told An Nahar daily.

Premier Najib Miqati confirmed that there were no mediation efforts to resolve the government crisis that erupted after the cabinet sessions were suspended over a dispute between the PM and ministers loyal to Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun.

“There are no contacts and no mediations to resolve the current crisis,” Miqati told An Nahar daily published Saturday.