Youth and Sports Minister Nora Bairakdarian informed President Joseph Aoun of her intention to renovate the Beirut Sports City, where the funeral of former Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah took place on Feb. 23.

During a meeting at Baabda Palace, the minister stated that she plans to task the Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR) with preparing a report on the condition of the Camille Chamoun Stadium to rehabilitate and make it operational again.

The Sports City, inaugurated in 1957, is an iconic stadium owned by the state and once hosted the region's most significant sporting and cultural events, but it has since been neglected. During the war between Israel and Hezbollah over the past two years, it was transformed into a dormitory and housed nearly 1,000 displaced people.

Bairakdarian also informed the head of state that she planned to assign the Council of the South to investigate the sports facilities destroyed by Israeli strikes in south Lebanon, intending to rehabilitate them, reported the state-run National News Agency (NNA). She said that she would contact the international community to discuss the possibility of rebuilding these facilities and repairing the damaged ones.