Heavy fighting on Thursday claimed at least six lives and left dozens wounded in Lebanon’s capital as an escalation of tensions around last year’s massive portside explosion turned parts of Beirut into a war zone.
The army deployed tanks and troops to quell street battles that sparked memories of the 1975-1990 civil war for a city already traumatized by last year’s blast disaster and Lebanon’s worst-ever economic crisis.
Bullets smashed into houses, while panicked civilians cowered indoors as the sound of gunfire and grenade blasts mixed with the wail of ambulance sirens for more than three hours.
Photo: Reuters
The unrest broke out after shots were fired at a demonstration by the Muslim Shiite Hezbollah and Amal movements.
The protesters were rallying against judge Tarek Bitar, tasked with investigating the massive explosion of poorly stored ammonium nitrate at Beirut’s port that killed more than 210 people and destroyed swathes of the capital on Aug. 4 last year.
The judge had in the past few days been in the sights of Hezbollah and Amal after he subpoenaed top officials in his probe.
Reporters said that Thursday’s violence started with sniper fire from residential buildings targeting the Hezbollah and Amal supporters, who returned fire with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun called for calm in a televised speech late on Thursday.
“Weapons cannot return as a means of communication between Lebanese parties, because we all agreed to turn this dark page of our history,” Aoun said in reference to the civil war.
Political leaders were “heading towards a solution” out of the crisis, he said.
The army said that it had responded to an exchange of gunfire in the Tayouneh-Badaro area as protesters headed to the Palace of Justice.
It “raided a number of places looking for the shooters, and detained nine” people in total, including individuals from both sides, it said, adding that one was of Syrian nationality.
The military did not specify who started the firefight.
Lebanese Minister of the Interior Bassam Mawlawi said that the “exchange started with sniper fire, with the first casualty shot in the head.”
At least six people were killed, all by gunfire, Mawlawi said, without specifying who fired the shots.
The Lebanese Ministry of Health said that 32 people were wounded.
Amal said that three of its members were killed, while Hezbollah announced that funerals of two men and one woman were to take place yesterday.
A doctor at Beirut’s Sahel hospital earlier told reporters that a 24-year-old woman was killed after she was hit in the head by a stray bullet inside her home.
Heavy fire rang out as ambulances rushed wounded people through the deserted streets, a few blocks from the Palace of Justice.
Iran-backed Hezbollah and Amal in a joint statement blamed the Lebanese Forces, a party that is staunchly opposed to them, saying that the opposing side had “fired sniper shots with the aim to kill.”
Political analyst Karim Bitar voiced concern about more trouble ahead.
“Hezbollah taking to the streets and throwing all its weight in this battle ... could lead to big clashes and to the destabilization of the entire country,” Bitar said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home