The Lebanese Parliament has voted by a majority of 76 votes to postpone for two years the elections scheduled for May, the state news agency reported, amid renewed war between Hezbollah and Israel.
The agency said that 41 MPs opposed and four abstained. Politicians including Mohammed Raad, the head of Hezbollah's parliamentary bloc, convened on Monday as Israeli warplanes flew above the southern suburbs of Beirut.
The move comes as Lebanon is pulled into a regional war triggered by the US-Israeli attack on Iran. The Lebanese group Hezbollah, which was founded by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard in 1982, launched attacks on Israel to avenge the killing of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, igniting a new Israeli offensive against the group.
Gebran Bassil, an MP and head of the Free Patriotic Movement, said the extension of the parliament's term was "a betrayal of the public trust".
"This is the worst form of democracy," he added. He also suggested the matter could be taken to court.
"What happened today is subject to challenge before the Constitutional Council because it undermines the regularity of elections and public order, and we regret that a large part of the council extended its own term, taking advantage of the war, regardless of whether it enjoys popular legitimacy or not," Mr Bassil said.
Nearly 400 people have been killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon since March 2, Lebanon's health ministry reported on Sunday, including at least 83 children and 42 women.
The Israeli military kept up its air strikes in the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut on Monday, sending plumes of smoke into the air above the city. It reiterated warnings to residents to leave, and announced it would act against a Hezbollah financial institution, Al Qard Al Hassan.
Lebanon last held a parliamentary election in May 2022, a vote marked by low turnout and deep public anger over the country's financial collapse. The election resulted in some gains for reformist candidates emerging from a 2019 protest movement, while Hezbollah and its allies lost their parliamentary majority.
