BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — Gun battles between pro- and anti-Syrian groups in the northern Lebanese port of Tripoli left at least 7 people dead and 22 wounded on Saturday, security officials said.
The Syrian conflict has repeatedly spilled over into Tripoli, Lebanon’s second-largest city, raising fears of an escalation in sectarian tensions in Lebanon.
The fighting started shortly before midnight Friday and intensified on Saturday, the officials said.
Lebanon and Syria share a complex web of political and sectarian ties and rivalries, which are easily inflamed. At least eight people died last month in clashes in Tripoli.
The conflict pits Sunni Muslims who support the Syrian rebels trying to oust President Bashar al-Assad against members of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, to which Mr. Assad belongs.
Smoke was seen billowing from several apartments near Tripoli’s Syria Street, the dividing line between the mainly Sunni Bab al-Tabbaneh neighborhood and the adjacent, mainly Alawite neighborhood of Jabal Mohsen, on a hill overlooking its rival. The area around Syria Street was mostly empty, and gunmen were seen roaming the streets.
“We are being targeted because we support the Syrian people,” a Sunni gunman said. Addressing Syrians, he said, “We are with you and will not abandon you.”
In Doha, Qatar, Burhan Ghalioun, head of Syria’s largest exile opposition group, said Saturday that he would welcome Arab military action aimed at ending attacks by Mr. Assad’s forces against rebels and civilians.
Mr. Ghalioun, who leads the Syrian National Council, made the comments before a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers. The envoys were to discuss the bloodshed in Syria, including the massacre in Houla, a cluster of farming villages in the central province of Homs, where the United Nations says at least 108 people, including dozens of children under the age of 10, were killed on May 25.
Gulf nations including Saudi Arabia and Qatar have pledged funds to aid Syria’s rebels, but there is no direct evidence that the money is reaching anti-Assad forces or that the rebels are becoming better armed. The Arab League, however, did not appear ready to deploy its own troops. Kofi Annan, the international envoy for Syria, was also in Doha.
As a way to curb the violence in Syria, the Arab League’s chief, Nabil Elaraby, suggested that the United Nations’s mission of nearly 300 observers be changed to a peacekeeping role.
“What is needed today is not only observing and investigating, but supervising that the violence stops,” he said.
The deployment of unarmed observers is part of Mr. Annan’s six-point peace plan, which includes a cease-fire that is to lead to talks between the government and its opponents. The cease-fire, however, has never taken hold.
The Syrian conflict has repeatedly spilled over into Tripoli, Lebanon’s second-largest city, raising fears of an escalation in sectarian tensions in Lebanon.
The fighting started shortly before midnight Friday and intensified on Saturday, the officials said.
Lebanon and Syria share a complex web of political and sectarian ties and rivalries, which are easily inflamed. At least eight people died last month in clashes in Tripoli.
The conflict pits Sunni Muslims who support the Syrian rebels trying to oust President Bashar al-Assad against members of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, to which Mr. Assad belongs.
Smoke was seen billowing from several apartments near Tripoli’s Syria Street, the dividing line between the mainly Sunni Bab al-Tabbaneh neighborhood and the adjacent, mainly Alawite neighborhood of Jabal Mohsen, on a hill overlooking its rival. The area around Syria Street was mostly empty, and gunmen were seen roaming the streets.
“We are being targeted because we support the Syrian people,” a Sunni gunman said. Addressing Syrians, he said, “We are with you and will not abandon you.”
In Doha, Qatar, Burhan Ghalioun, head of Syria’s largest exile opposition group, said Saturday that he would welcome Arab military action aimed at ending attacks by Mr. Assad’s forces against rebels and civilians.
Mr. Ghalioun, who leads the Syrian National Council, made the comments before a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers. The envoys were to discuss the bloodshed in Syria, including the massacre in Houla, a cluster of farming villages in the central province of Homs, where the United Nations says at least 108 people, including dozens of children under the age of 10, were killed on May 25.
Gulf nations including Saudi Arabia and Qatar have pledged funds to aid Syria’s rebels, but there is no direct evidence that the money is reaching anti-Assad forces or that the rebels are becoming better armed. The Arab League, however, did not appear ready to deploy its own troops. Kofi Annan, the international envoy for Syria, was also in Doha.
As a way to curb the violence in Syria, the Arab League’s chief, Nabil Elaraby, suggested that the United Nations’s mission of nearly 300 observers be changed to a peacekeeping role.
“What is needed today is not only observing and investigating, but supervising that the violence stops,” he said.
The deployment of unarmed observers is part of Mr. Annan’s six-point peace plan, which includes a cease-fire that is to lead to talks between the government and its opponents. The cease-fire, however, has never taken hold.