LEBANON: Sectarian fighting in Lebanon's northern city of Tripoli continues with gunmen shooting at each other and firing rockets

Record ID: 375628

  • Title: LEBANON: Sectarian fighting in Lebanon's northern city of Tripoli continues with gunmen shooting at each other and firing rockets
  • Date: 25th May 2013
  • Summary: TRIPOLI, LEBANON (MAY 26, 2013) (REUTERS) MILITANTS WALKING IN THE STREET IN BAB AL TABBANEH, A SUNNI DISTRICT / ONE OF THE MILITANTS HOLDING A ROCKET LAUNCHER MILITANT LOOKING THROUGH SNIPER RIFLE LENS MILITANT FIRING FROM A MACHINE GUN FROM A SANDBAGGED POSITION IN BAB AL-TABBANEH PAN OF MILITANTS STANDING SNIPER FIRING TWO ROUNDS OF FIRE WIDE OF STREET IN BAB AL-T
  • Embargoed: 9th June 2013 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Lebanon
  • Country: Lebanon
  • Topics: Conflict
  • Reuters ID: LVA4MRHJHC1MFDNWEIPODOO5U7WF
  • Story Text: Fighting in the northern Lebanese town of Tripoli between Sunni Muslims and the small Alawite community has claimed the lives of at least 25 people in 8 days and one resident found an unexploded rocket in his back yard on Sunday (May 26).
    The street fighting began after the battle for Qusair across the border in Syria.
    Syria's two-year uprising has polarised Lebanon, with Sunni Muslims supporting the rebellion against Bashar al-Assad and Shi'ite Hezbollah standing by the Syrian president.
    Two rockets also hit a Shi'ite Muslim district of southern Beirut a day after the leader of Lebanese Shi'ite militant movement Hezbollah said his group would continue fighting in Syria until victory.
    It was the first attack to apparently target Hezbollah's stronghold in the south of the Lebanese capital since the outbreak of the two-year conflict in neighbouring Syria, which s sharply heightened Lebanon's own sectarian tensions.
    Hezbollah forces and Assad's troops launched a fierce assault last week aimed at driving Syrian rebels out of Qusair, a strategic town close to the Lebanese border which rebels have used as a supply route for weapons coming into the country.
    Nasrallah's speech was condemned by Sunni Muslim former Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri who said that Hezbollah, set up by Iran in the 1980s to fight Israeli occupation forces in south Lebanon, had abandoned anti-Israeli "resistance" in favour of sectarian conflict in Syria.
    "The resistance is ending by your hand and your will," Hariri said in a statement. "The resistance announced its political and military suicide in Qusair".
    Hariri is backed by Saudi Arabia, which along with other Sunni Muslim Gulf Arab monarchies has strongly supported the uprising against Iranian-backed Assad, whose minority Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.
    Lebanon, haunted by its own 1975-1990 civil war and torn by the same sectarian rifts as its powerful neighbour, has sought to pursue a police of "dissociation" from the Syrian turmoil.
    But it is struggling to deal with nearly half a million refugees who have fled the fighting in Syria and its northern city of Tripoli has seen frequent explosions of violence between Sunni Muslims and the small Alawite community.
    Most of the fighting in Tripoli takes place over night when residents listen to sounds of rocket-propelled grenades and sniper fire. One man showed an unexploded rocket which landed in a yard in Saturday night's fighting.
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