Caretaker Interior Minister Marwan Charbel has promoted Friday the Acting ISF Chief Brigadier General Ibrahim Basbous to the rank of a general, assigned him all the duties and responsibilities entailed by his post, and enabled him to chair the ISF command council after filling the underlined vacancies.

In remarks published in Assafir newspaper, Charbel deemed the promotion of Basbous as necessary in order to enable him to chair the ISF command meetings, noting that he will continue to assume the post of an 'acting' chief given that full prerogatives require a cabinet decree.

The minister attributed Basbous' promotion to the "exceptional circumstances" that the country was going through, saying he has taken this decision after he had lost hope in any chance for the caretaker cabinet to convene.