Local News
Fighting in Northern Lebanon Shatters Two-Week-Old Truce
By The Wall Street Journal
Jul 10, 2008 - 4:28:08 AM

BEIRUT -- Heavy fighting erupted again Wednesday between government supporters and Hezbollah allies in northern Lebanon, killing at least four people and shattering a fragile truce that lasted just two weeks, security officials said.
 
More than 50 people were wounded, including five Lebanese soldiers, in clashes that officials said began overnight when three hand grenades exploded in a street separating rival districts in Tripoli, Lebanon's second-largest city.

Machine gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades rattled for hours through the two neighborhoods -- one a Sunni Muslim area comprised mainly of government supporters, the other Alawite, a small offshoot of Shiite Islam, allied with Syria and the Lebanese opposition.

Security officials described the fighting and casualties on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to media.

Last month, nine people died and 44 others were wounded in the same neighborhoods before government forces deployed there.

The renewed fighting comes as Western-backed Prime Minister Fuad Saniora is struggling to form a national unity government in which Hezbollah will have veto power in all government decisions. The Hezbollah-led opposition won the concession in May as part of an Arab-brokered deal that ended a political stalemate that had threatened to stoke sectarian violence and plunge Lebanon into another civil war.

Before the May deal, more than 80 people died nationwide and over 200 were wounded after Hezbollah militants and their allies overran streets in Beirut and clashed with government supporters.

Tension has been rising between rival neighborhoods in Tripoli, 50 miles north of Beirut, despite a constant army and police presence since a local truce took hold on June 23. About 20 houses were torched last month in apparent acts of revenge.

Copyright © 2008 Associated Press