The Last Exile

There was a ‘not’ sectarian clash in the streets of Beirut with Hezbollah supports according to this New York Times article. Note: rifles, grenades and apparently RPG’s were deployed – and not by the Lebanese Army.

Members of the Shiite Hezbollah and the conservative Sunni Al-Ahbash group fought one another with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades on Tuesday, just blocks from downtown Beirut. Three people, including a Hezbollah official and his aide, were killed, security officials said, in the worst clash in Beirut since May 2008, when Hezbollah gunmen swept through Sunni neighborhoods after the government tried to dismantle the group’s telecommunications network.

No worries ‘cause everyone kissed and made up – everyone, but the dead that is.

A joint statement issued later by the two groups said that the episode had stemmed from a “personal dispute and has no political or sectarian background,” and that each side agreed to immediately end their differences and all armed street presences.

The NY Times blurb is interesting as it is the only report I have seen which alluding to the dismantling of a telecommunication network as the catalyst. The Jerusalem Post carries a somewhat less santizied version in which a battle was more reminiscent of a shoot-out inside the OK corral(or should I say ‘OK Mosque’?)

Gunmen stood on the corners and peered down alleyways in the neighborhood while families ran for cover. Ambulances rushed to the scene, and an elderly man was loaded into a stretcher, clutching his neck.

The shootout erupted between supporters of the Shi’ite Hizbullah and a Sunni conservative group in the mixed residential area of Bourj Abu Haidar near Beirut’s downtown, security officials said. Hizbullah was battling the pro-Syrian Sunni Association of Islamic Charitable Projects, known as the Al-Ahbash group, which has a history of feuding with the Shi’ite group, they added.

The officials said Muhammad Fawaz, the local Hizbullah commander in Bourj Abu Haidar, had been killed along with his subordinate Ali Jouaz. Fawaz Omeirat of Al-Ahbash was also killed in the fighting.

According to initial reports, the car in which they were traveling got into the crossfire between Hizbullah supporters and the Sunni group. According to Lebanese paper Al-Akhabr, the clash started when Al-Ahbash members tried to bar Hizbullah men from passing through a neighborhood where the Sunni group holds control.

Shortly afterward, Shi’ite supporters of Hizbullah and sister organization Amal set fire to a Sunni mosque in the nearby neighborhood of Basta, according to an AP photographer.

Salah, a 40-year-old who did not wish to give his last name, said he had been inside the Bourj Abu Haidar mosque when he heard a commotion outside and people screaming, “Calm down.” Then, 20 minutes later, he heard gunshots and bullets slamming into the mosque. “They were shooting at the mosque. I think these people are crazy. They must have gone home to get their friends,” he said. Salah stayed inside with others before fleeing during a lull in the fighting. Sunni fighters were reportedly holding the bodies of the slain Hizbullah members and were given a three-hour ultimatum to transfer them to Hizbullah.

As long as Hezbollah remains armed – the Lebanese will remain tourists in their native land.