Heavy fighting reported in Lebanon

Heavy fighting broke out between pro and anti-government supporters in Lebanon’s central mountains overlooking the capital today sending echoes of gunfire and explosions rolling across Beirut, security officials said.

The clashes between pro-government supporters of Druse leader Walid Jumblatt and Shiite gunmen and their allies started in the mountain town of Aytat around 2pm (12 noon Irish time) involving exchanges of rockets and machine gun fire, the officials said. It later spread to the nearby towns of Kayfoun, Qamatiyeh, Bchamoun and Chouweifat, they added.

There were no initial reports of casualties. Jumblatt called for a halt to the fighting and for the army to take control of the mountains.

The clashes came a day after Hezbollah accused Jumblatt’s followers of killing two of their supporters and kidnapping a third.

Beirut, for four days the focus of bloody sectarian clashes between Sunnis and Shiites, was quiet. However, many of its roads remained blocked, including the one to the airport, by the ongoing civil disobedience campaign of the opposition.

Clashes took place overnight in the north of the country, particularly in Tripoli, where pro-government supporters in the Tebaneh neighbourhood exchanged rocket propelled grenades and heavy machine gun fire with opposition followers, the officials said.

The clashes were over by morning when the Lebanese army deployed on the streets between the warring factions.

One woman was killed in the northern violence, bringing the toll across the country for the past five days to 38 – the worst sectarian fighting since Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.

The street fighting is latest turn in a test of wills between the Hezbollah-led opposition and the government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora. The US-backed government has only a slim majority in parliament, and the two sides have been locked in a 17-month power struggle. The deadlock has prevented parliament from electing a president, leaving the country without a head of state since November.

Violence erupted after the government confronted Hezbollah earlier in the week saying it would sack the chief of airport security for alleged ties to the militant group and declared the its private telephone network illegal and a threat to state security.

The army offered Hezbollah a compromise, allowing the airport security chief to retain his post and recommending the government to reverse its decision on the phone network.

A government official said the Cabinet would meet in the next two days “to discuss the possible exits for the crisis”. It is widely believed the cabinet will then revoke its decisions.

At midday, Prime Minister Fuad Siniora and some of his ministers and staff members held a moment of silence at the government building in honour of people killed in the violence. A nearby downtown church tolled its bells to mark the occasion.

Beirut’s streets were largely deserted today, a day off in Lebanon. In the western Beirut neighbourhood of Karakol Druse, which saw heavy fighting on Thursday, a man swept glass from outside his shop. A gaping hole from a rocket propelled grenade and bullet holes marked the facade of a normally busy bakery, now closed.

Inside neighbourhoods, no one was openly carrying weapons, save for small knots of gunmen from Hezbollah-ally Syrian Social Nationalist Party sitting outside the Economy Ministry in the western district of Hamra and in the seaside Rawshe area.

On Beirut’s normally bustling seaside corniche, workers outside five-star hotels were cleaning the blackened streets scarred by burning tires.

Arab foreign ministers met in Egypt today to try to find a solution to the latest deadly crisis.

Also today, Pope Benedict XVI urged the Lebanese people to find a “reasonable compromise” to end their conflict.

Benedict told pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square that he was following “with deep concern” the developments in Lebanon, where, “with political initiative at a stalemate, first came verbal violence and then armed clashes, with many dead and wounded”.