Lebanon plunged into fear and gloom today as mourners came to the mountain town of Bikfaya to pay thier last respects to a Christian politician, whose assassination threatened to push the country’s political crisis over the brink.

LOLA COHEN and Joy Wolfe (Irish Examiner letters, August 12) seem a bit confused in their criticism of Anti-War Ireland and of our call on Israel to end its mass murder of innocent civilians in Lebanon and Palestine.

IF members of Anti-War Ireland are seriously opposed to violent conflict, maybe they should be persuading Hezbollah to stop indiscriminately killing Jews, Arabs and Druse in Israel.

FATIMA Haider remembers the day her family rushed to help survivors of a bomb that destroyed the US embassy next to her childhood home in Beirut.

ISRAELI tanks and troops pulled back to the Israel-Gaza border yesterday after a particularly deadly incursion that killed 30 Palestinians over three days.

Liverpool will make an official protest to UEFA following the prospect of having to play a Champions League tie in Israel.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, after conferring with her aides, said today she will return to the Middle East to work with others on trying to bring an end to the Israeli-Hezbollah fighting, but did not say when she would travel.

TERRORISM is a show of inhumane ferocity that will never be able to solve conflicts among human beings.

In a surprise visit to Beirut today, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice praised the beleaguered prime minister of Lebanon for his courage in struggling to contain the fighting between the Hezbollah militia and Israel.

PRESIDENT Saddam Hussein said yesterday he was ready to give UN weapons inspectors a chance to disprove American allegations that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.

The Lebanese government has accused Israel of assassinating a former Christian warlord who planned to testify against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in a war crimes case in Belgium.