TRIPOLI: The death toll from three days of fighting between members of two Muslim sects in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli rose to 10 yesterday, security and medical sources said, in violence stoked by the civil war in neighbouring Syria.
One person was killed by a sniper and four more died yesterday from injuries sustained earlier in the week during clashes between Sunni Muslims and members of the Shia-derived Alawite sect in Lebanon’s
second city.
The fighting broke out on Thursday after gunmen fatally shot a Sunni man who had Alawite family members and lived in a mostly Alawite area of
the city.
A 10-year-old girl died in the resulting clashes and three others died from their wounds the next day.
More than 50 people, including at least eight Lebanese soldiers, were wounded in clashes in which snipers and rocket-propelled grenades were used.
The fighting had slowed by yesterday following intervention by the army, but snipers from both sides were still operating around Syria Street, which separates the Alawite enclave of Jabal Mohsen from the Sunni district of Bab
Al Tabbaneh.
The sources said most of those killed were civilians and that they were all Sunni Muslims, though one of them had lived
in the Alawite neighbourhood.
The long-standing rivalry between Tripoli’s Alawites and Sunnis has worsened because of sectarian tensions in Syria, where the three-year-old conflict has killed more than 146,000 people.
Lebanese Sunnis largely support the Sunni-led uprising against President Bashar
Al Assad, who tends to enjoy the backing of his fellow
Alawites in large numbers across the country.
The periodic clashes in the coastal city have been fought with increasingly sophisticated weaponry, as rocket-propelled grenade launchers have been used alongside lighter weapons like assault rifles.
REUTERS
