Deaths amid fresh Lebanon fighting

More than 30 people have been injured in the fighting.

A police officer was killed by a stray bullet on Sunday in al-Qobbe district while three other men were killed during clashes in Jabal Mohsen, security officials said.

The various factions had agreed earlier on Sunday that the Lebanese army should be deployed to maintain security and they would keep their fighters off the streets, but clashes continued soon afterwards.

Sectarian violence

Zeina Khodr, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Tripoli, said the situation in Tripoli was very dangerous.

“It is very difficult to cross the frontline because of sniper fire … today the fighters have been using light- and medium-sized weapons. There is no sign that the violence is going to come to an end,” she said.

“People are saying that the clashes are taking a toll on their lives; they are unable to open their shops or go to work.

A Lebanese security official said pro-government Sunni fighters fought a group of Alawites, a branch of Shia Islam which supports Hezbollah, a Shia Lebanese group.

Bab al-Tebbaneh and al-Qobbe are mainly Sunni districts while residents of Jabal Mohsen are predominantly Alawite.

Jabal Mohsen is that base of the Alawite community’s Arab Democratic Party, a group allied to the opposition.

Khodr said that there is historical animosity between the Alawites and the Sunnis in Bab al-Tebbaneh, but that the conflict today is purely political.

Political stalemate

The violence took place amid stalled efforts by Fouad Siniora, the prime minister, to form a new government of national unity following a deal last month to end a long-running crisis that had brought the country to the brink of civil war.

The deal, brokered in Doha, the capital of Qatar, led to the election of Michel Sleiman, the former army chief, as president.

The accord also called for the formation of a cabinet in which the opposition will have veto power over key decisions as well as a new electoral law.

“Ever since the Doha agreement was signed and the election of a new president we have seen sporadic clashes in various areas of Lebanon,” Khodr said.

“Nobody knows whether this is an organised campaign by the political parties or whether it is localized friction between the groups, especially here in Tripoli.”

Fighter wounded

A Muslim fighter was critically wounded on Sunday in a blast near the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Helweh in south Lebanon which injured four others, a security official told the AFP new agency.

Imad Yassin, a senior member of the Jund al-Sham group, was wounded along with two of his bodyguards when a charge placed in a rubbish bin exploded in the Taameer Ain el-Helweh area outside the camp, the official said.

A woman and an eight-year-old girl were also slightly wounded in the blast which prompted several families to flee the area.

Tension was high inside the camp with fighters from the mainstream Palestinian Fatah faction deploying to prevent an escalation, an AFP correspondent reported.