Lebanese troops disperse Sunni protesters

June 28, 2013

BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanese troops fired in the air Friday to disperse dozens of Sunni Muslims demonstrating in support of a hardline cleric who has been on the run since the military crushed his fighters earlier this week.

Lebanon is grappling with rising tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims linked to the more than 2-year-old conflict in neighboring Syria, which has sparked deadly street fighting on several occasions in Lebanese cities between the rival sects.

The Lebanese military moved Friday to break up the demonstration in the southern port city of Sidon after protesters tried to reach the mosque complex where the Sunni cleric Ahmad al-Assir used to give his sermons. There were similar protests by Sunnis in the capital Beirut and the northern city of Tripoli, Lebanon's third largest.

Protesters briefly closed the highway linking Beirut with Tripoli Friday afternoon and damaged a Lebanese army statue near the northern city, the state-run National News Agency said. Al-Assir's compound has been under army control since Monday following two days of fighting between troops and al-Assir's followers that left dozens of people dead.

The cleric's rapid rise in popularity among Sunnis underscored the deep frustration of many Lebanese who resent the influence Shiites have gained in government via the powerful Shiite militant group Hezbollah.

Al-Assir has been one of Hezbollah's harshest critics in Lebanon and had called on fellow Sunnis to go fight in Syria against President Bashar Assad's forces. His calls intensified earlier this year after Hezbollah fighters joined Assad's forces against the Syrian opposition, which is dominated by Sunnis.

Syria's conflict has increasingly taken on sectarian overtones. The rebels fighting to remove Assad are primarily Sunnis, and have been joined by Sunni fighters from other Muslim countries. Assad's regime, in contrast, is led by the president's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and his forces have been bolstered by fighters from Hezbollah, a factor that has helped fan the sectarian nature of the conflict.

Lebanon and Syria share a complex web of political and sectarian ties and rivalries that are easily enflamed. Lebanon, a country plagued by decades of strife, has been on edge since the uprising in Syria against Assad erupted in March 2011.

Sidon, located about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Beirut, had largely been spared from violence plaguing Lebanon's border areas where Syria's civil war has been spilling over with increasing frequency.

On Friday, troops fired into the air with heavy machine guns mounted on armored personnel carriers to disperse the protesters. People ran in fear in the streets as cars sped away from the area. Fighting in the Mediterranean city began Sunday after troops arrested an al-Assir follower. The army says the cleric's supporters opened fire without provocation on an army checkpoint.

Official reports said at least 18 soldiers were killed and 50 wounded in the fighting, while more than 20 of al-Assir's supporters died in the battle. Some Sunni activists said the army was joined by Hezbollah fighters in the battle against al-Assir, a claim that the army denied.

Sidon's demonstration started after thousands attended Friday prayers in a mosque in the city center. The prayer was attended by a prominent ultraconservative Sunni Salafi cleric from northern Lebanon, Daia Al-Islam Al-Shahal, and the Sunni mufti of Sidon, Sheik Salim Soussan.

Soussan urged the army to open a "fair, objective and legal investigation" into the fighting in Sidon. "We totally reject that some illegitimate armed groups take part in the raids, provocations and interrogation of people," Soussan said in an apparent reference to Hezbollah. "We put the state responsible for that."

Earlier in the day, a roadside bomb went off on a highway near the eastern city of Zahleh, in the Bekaa Valley, without causing casualties. Local TV stations said the morning bomb hit three SUVs carrying Hezbollah members.

There have been two other similar incidents in the eastern Bekaa Valley over the past weeks.

Lebanese troops secure hardline cleric's complex

June 25, 2013

BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanese troops detonated booby traps at a complex captured from followers of a hardline Sunni cleric on Tuesday, securing the area after two days of fighting that left dozens dead in the port city of Sidon.

Soldiers who blocked off several office and residential buildings around the mosque where Ahmad al-Assir once preached told reporters they were clearing the complex of explosives. An Associated Press photographer on the scene heard several explosions and saw black smoke billowing during the operation.

The fate of Al-Assir, a maverick Sunni sheik who controlled the complex for about two years, is unknown. His rapid rise in popularity among Sunnis underscored the deep frustration of many Lebanese who resent the influence Shiites have gained in government via the militant group Hezbollah.

Official reports said at least 17 soldiers were killed and 50 were wounded in the fighting while more than 20 of al-Assir's supporters died in the battle, according to a security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk to reporters.

The fighting, some of the worst involving Lebanese troops in years, was seen as a test of the weak government's ability to contain the furies unleashed by the civil war in neighboring Syria. Despite the heavy death toll, the military appeared to have successfully put down the threat from al-Assir and his armed supporters by late Monday.

The officials said troops raided several apartments around Sidon on Tuesday in search of al-Assir's followers. Security was tight in hospitals where wounded militants were being treated, they added, with even relatives prevented from visiting them.

"I was surprised. This was not a mosque. It was a security center," outgoing Interior Minister Marwan Charbel told reporters after touring the Bilal bin Rabbah complex in Sidon where al-Assir's supporters had been holed up. He said among the detainees who were fighting with al-Assir were foreigners.

"They brought in foreigners to kill Lebanese," Charbel said, without giving nationalities other than a Sudanese who was detained Tuesday. President Michel Suleiman said in a statement that army command has been given the "political support" to retaliate against groups that threaten national security.

By noon, streets around al-Assir's complex were packed with people who came to inspect their homes and shops, many of which were damaged during the fighting. Lebanese commandos patrolled streets littered with cars that were burnt-out and riddled with bullets.

Inside the complex, a seven-story building was pockmarked with shells and bullet holes and the top two floors appeared totally burnt. The small mosque where al-Assir preached appeared intact. Troops had avoided hitting it directly.

A woman who came to the area weeping asked to be allowed to enter the complex to see if her son was there. "I saw his picture on TV and he was dead," she screamed, before soldiers directed her search to the hospital morgue.

Earlier Tuesday, the bodies of six fighters were found in the complex and on roofs of nearby buildings. They were later taken away in Lebanese Red Cross ambulances. The state-run National News Agency reported Tuesday that military prosecutor Saqr Saqr has asked military intelligence to open an investigation into the Sidon clashes and begin interrogating some 40 detainees. On Monday, Saqr issued arrest warrants for al-Assir and 123 of his supporters.

The U.S. embassy in Beirut urged Americans to avoid all travel to Lebanon because of safety and security concerns. "U.S. citizens living and working in Lebanon should understand that they accept risks in remaining and should carefully consider those risks," it said.

"We condemn in the strongest terms the attacks by militants against the Lebanese Armed Forces, which have resulted in the deaths of a number of soldiers and civilians," said U.S. State Department Acting Deputy Spokesperson Patrick Ventrell. He added that the U.S. is fully committed to Lebanon's stability, sovereignty, and independence and said Washington will continue to assist and train security forces.

Sidon, located about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Beirut, had largely been spared from violence plaguing Lebanon's border areas where Syria's civil war has been spilling over. Fighting in the Mediterranean city began Sunday after troops arrested an al-Assir follower. The army says the cleric's supporters opened fire without provocation on an army checkpoint.

The fighting in Sidon is the bloodiest involving the army since the military fought a three-month battle in 2007 against the al-Qaida-inspired Fatah Islam group inside the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared in northern Lebanon. The Lebanese army crushed the group, but the clashes killed more than 170 soldiers.

Syria's civil war has been bleeding into Lebanon for the past year, following similar sectarian lines of Sunni and Shiite camps. Overstretched and outgunned by militias, the military has struggled on multiple fronts in the eastern Bekaa valley and the northern city of Tripoli, where armed factions have fought street battles that often last several days.

Al-Assir, a 45-year-old cleric, supports the overwhelmingly Sunni rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad. Also Tuesday, a roadside bomb exploded on the key highway linking Beirut to the Syrian capital without causing casualties, security officials said. They said the small bomb went off early in the morning near the town of Barr Elias, a few kilometers (miles) from the border crossing point of Masnaa.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. It was the second such attack on the highway within weeks.

Clashes present test for Lebanon's weak military

June 24, 2013

BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanon's third-largest city of Sidon was turned into a battle zone Monday as the military fought heavily armed followers of an extremist Sunni Muslim cleric holed up in a mosque.

Residents of the southern port fled machine-gun fire and grenade explosions that shook the coastal area in one of the deadliest rounds of violence, seen as a test of the weak government's ability to contain the furies unleashed by the civil war in neighboring Syria.

Official reports said at least 16 soldiers were killed and 50 were wounded in two days of clashes with armed followers of Ahmad al-Assir, a maverick Sunni sheik whose rapid rise is a sign of the deep frustration among many Lebanese who resent the ascendancy of Shiites to power, led by the militant group Hezbollah. More than 20 of al-Assir's supporters were killed, according to a security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk to reporters.

The fierce battle that al-Assir's fighters were putting up showed how aggressive Sunni extremists have grown in Lebanon, building on anger not only at Syria's regime but also its allies in Hezbollah. "Sidon is a war zone," said Nabil Azzam, a resident who returned briefly Monday to check on his home after having fled with his family a day earlier. "This is the result of all the sectarian rhetoric that has been building because of the war in Syria. It was bound to happen," he said by telephone, a conversation interrupted by a burst of gunfire.

Machine-gun fire and explosions from rocket-propelled grenade caused panic among residents, who also reported power and water outages. Snipers allied with al-Assir took over rooftops, terrorizing civilians, and many were asking to be evacuated from the heavily populated neighborhood around the Bilal bin Rabbah Mosque, where al-Assir preaches and where the fighting has been concentrated.

The military appealed to the gunmen to turn themselves in, vowing to continue its operations "until security is totally restored." By evening, the army had stormed the mosque complex, though not the mosque itself.

In addition to the more than 20 followers of the cleric who were killed, dozens of them were arrested, the security official said. There was no sign of al-Assir and it was unclear if he was in the mosque or had managed to escape.

The fighting in Sidon is the bloodiest involving the army since the military fought a three-month battle in 2007 against the al-Qaida-inspired Fatah Islam group inside the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared in northern Lebanon. The Lebanese army crushed the group, but the clashes killed more than 170 soldiers.

The scenes of soldiers aiming at gunmen holed up in residential buildings and armored personnel vehicles deployed in the streets evoked memories of Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war. The challenges facing the Lebanese military resemble those that prevailed in that conflict, which eventually splintered the army along sectarian lines.

"It's the memory of this destructive war that remains as a restraining force — for now," said Fawaz A. Gerges, director of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics. Syria's civil war has been bleeding into Lebanon for the past year, following similar sectarian lines of Sunni and Shiite camps. Overstretched and outgunned by militias, the military has struggled on multiple fronts in the eastern Bekaa valley and the northern city of Tripoli as armed factions fought street battles that often lasted several days.

In many cases, soldiers stood by helplessly and watched the violence. On Monday, however, the army moved against al-Assir after his followers opened fire on an army checkpoint unprovoked. Al-Assir, a 45-year-old bearded cleric who supports the overwhelmingly Sunni rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad, is an unlikely figure to challenge the Lebanese army.

Few had heard of him until last year, when he began agitating for Hezbollah to disarm, taking advantage of the deep frustration among Lebanon's Sunnis and a political void on the Sunni street following the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a powerful Sunni leader.

Last year, al-Assir set up a protest tent city that closed a main road in Sidon for a month in a sit-in meant to pressure Hezbollah to disarm. He kept local and international media entertained by pulling stunts such as riding his bicycle and getting his hair cut in public while he openly challenged and taunted Hezbollah like few had dared before. He even publicly criticized Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah — something few would do in Lebanon.

In February, al-Assir caused a stir when he and hundreds of his bearded supporters arrived in buses at a ski resort in the Christian heartland, where residents set up roadblocks to try to keep him out.

He teamed up with Fadel Shaker, a once-prominent Lebanese singer-turned Salafist, who took to reciting verses of the Quran at al-Assir's protests. Shaker's brother, a close aide to al-Assir, was killed in confrontations with the army Monday, the National News Agency said.

Despite his attention-seeking tactics, al-Assir's rants against Hezbollah resonated with many Sunnis who are bitter about Hezbollah's increasingly dominant role in Lebanese politics. Many in the Western-backed coalition known as March 14, headed by Hariri's son, Saad, quietly backed al-Assir as he launched his anti-Hezbollah tirades, and several Sunni politicians attacked the army, accusing it of bias in favor of Hezbollah.

Last month, after Hezbollah openly joined Assad's forces in the border town of Qusair, al-Assir called on Sunnis in Lebanon to enter the fight in in Syria, and posted pictures of himself allegedly in Qusair before its fall into government hands. He accused the army of inaction in the face of Hezbollah's growing involvement in Syria.

But al-Assir appears to have overplayed his cards by attacking the army, the only trusted institution in the country, triggering a backlash. "The bravery of the army facing al-Assir's well-armed supporters has shamed Lebanese politicians," said Hisham Jaber, a retired army general who heads a Beirut-based think tank. He said the army appeared determined to remain neutral despite attempts by politicians to splinter it.

Sidon, located about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Beirut, has largely been spared the violence plaguing border areas. The clashes began Sunday in the Mediterranean city after troops arrested an al-Assir follower. The army says the cleric's supporters opened fire without provocation on an army checkpoint.

Many people living on upper floors moved downstairs for cover or fled to safer areas. Some were seen carrying children. Others stayed locked in their homes or shops, afraid of getting caught in the crossfire. Gray smoke billowed over parts of the city.

Hezbollah appeared to be staying largely out of the clashes, although a few of its supporters in Sidon were briefly drawn into the fight Sunday, firing on al-Assir's supporters. At least one was killed, according to his relatives in the city who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared for their safety.

Last week, al-Assir supporters fought with pro-Hezbollah gunmen, leaving two dead. Fighting also broke out in parts of Ein el-Hilweh, a teeming Palestinian refugee camp near Sidon, where al-Assir has supporters. Islamist factions in the camp lobbed mortar rounds at military checkpoints around the camp.

Tension also spread to the north in Tripoli, Lebanon's second-largest city. Masked gunmen roamed the city center, firing in the air and forcing shops and businesses to shut down in solidarity with al-Assir. Dozens of gunmen also set fire to tires, blocking roads. The city's main streets emptied out, but there was no unusual military or security deployment.

"The Syrian fire is beginning to devour Lebanon, and the longer the conflict goes on, the more danger there is for Lebanon to implode," Gerges said. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem blamed the violence in Lebanon on the international decision to arm the rebels, saying that it will only serve to prolong the fighting in Syria and will affect Lebanon.

"What is going in Sidon is very dangerous, very dangerous," he told reporters in Damascus. "We warned since the start that the impact of what happens in Syria on neighboring countries will be grave."

Associated Press writer Sarah El Deeb contributed to this report.

Lebanon clashes rage near mosque; 16 soldiers dead

June 24, 2013

BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanese army units battled followers of a hard-line Sunni cleric holed up in a mosque complex in a southern port city on Monday, the second day of fighting that has left at least 16 soldiers dead, the military said.

The clashes in Sidon, Lebanon's third-largest city some 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Beirut, are the latest bout of violence in Lebanon linked to the conflict in neighboring Syria. They are the bloodiest yet involving the army — at least two of those killed are officers. The Lebanese media has depicted the clashes as a test for the state in containing armed groups that have taken up the cause of the warring sides in Syria, whose sectarian makeup mirrors that of its smaller neighbor.

The two days of fighting between troops and armed supporters of Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir have transformed the city, which had been largely spared the violence plaguing border areas near Syria, into a combat zone.

The National News Agency said the clashes also left fifty wounded. Hospital officials said at least three of al-Assir's supporters died in the fighting. The military in a statement said the gunmen were using the religious compound to fire on its troops and had taken civilians as shields.

Machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenade explosions caused panic among residents of Sidon. Residents reported power and water outage. The city streets appeared largely deserted Monday. Local media reported many residents were asking for evacuation from the heavily populated neighborhood around the Bilal bin Rabbah Mosque where al-Assir preaches, and where the fighting has been concentrated. The local municipality said that the city is "a war zone," appealing for a cease-fire to evacuate the civilians and wounded in the area.

Many people living on upper floors came down or fled to safer areas, while others were seen running away from fighting areas carrying children. Others remained locked up in their homes or shops, fearing getting caught in the crossfire. Gray smoke billowed over parts of the city.

The military appealed to the gunmen to hand themselves in. In its statement, it said that it "reassures all Lebanese that it will continue to uproot the strife and will not stop its operations until security is totally restored to the city and its boroughs, and falls under the rule of law and order."

The clashes erupted Sunday in the predominantly Sunni city after troops arrested a follower of al-Assir. The army says supporters of the cleric opened fire without provocation on an army checkpoint. Al-Assir is a virulent critic of the powerful Shiite militant Hezbollah group, which along with its allies dominates Lebanon's government. He supports rebels fighting to oust Syria's President Bashar Assad.

A few Hezbollah supporters in the city were briefly drawn into the fight Sunday, firing on al-Assir's supporters. At least one was killed, according to his relatives in the city who spoke anonymously out of concerns for their security.

But the group appeared to be staying largely out of the ongoing clashes. Last week, al-Assir supporters fought with pro-Hezbollah gunmen, leaving two killed. Early Monday, al-Assir appealed to his supporters through his Twitter account in other parts of Lebanon to rise to his help, threatening to widen the scale of clashes.

The tweets did not give a clear statement on how the battle began. It came after a series of incidents pitting the cleric's followers against other groups in the town, including Hezbollah supporters and the army.

The cleric is believed to have hundreds of armed supporters in Sidon involved in the fighting. Dozens of al-Assir's gunmen also partially shut down the main highway linking south Lebanon with Beirut. On Monday, they opened fire in other parts of the city, with local media reporting gunshots in the city's market.

Fighting also broke out in parts of Ein el-Hilweh, a teeming Palestinian refugee camp near Sidon, where al-Assir has supporters. Islamist factions inside the camp lobbed mortars at military checkpoints around the camp. Tension also spread to the north in Tripoli, Lebanon's second largest city. Masked gunmen roamed the city center, firing in the air and forcing shops and businesses to shut down in solidarity with al-Assir. Dozens of gunmen also set fire to tires, blocking roads. The city's main streets were emptying out. There was no unusual military or security deployment.

Sectarian clashes in Lebanon tied to the Syrian conflict have intensified in recent weeks, especially after Hezbollah sent fighters to support Assad's forces. Most of the rebels fighting to topple Assad are from Syria's Sunni majority, while the President Bashar Assad belongs to the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Walid al-Moallem, Syria's foreign minister, blamed the violence in Lebanon on the international decision to arm rebels, saying that it will only serve to prolong the fighting in Syria and will impact neighboring Lebanon.

"What is going in Sidon is very dangerous, very dangerous," he told reporters in Damascus. "We warned since the start that the impact of what happens in Syria on neighboring countries will be grave." In Syria, activists reported fighting Monday between Syrian troops and rebels in the northern province of Aleppo as well as districts on the edge of the Syrian capital and its suburbs.

Clashes in Lebanon have also mostly pitted Sunni against Shiite. The most frequent outbreaks have involved rival neighborhoods in the northern port city of Tripoli, close to the Syrian border. President Michel Suleiman called for an emergency security meeting later Monday.

Headlines of Lebanon's newspapers were all dominated by the violence in Sidon, with many seeing it as a test for the state to impose order. "An attempt to assassinate Sidon and the military," read the headline of the daily al-Safir. "Al-Assir crosses the red line," read another headline in al-Jomhouria daily. A third headline in al-Nahar read: "Yesterday war in Sidon. Today, decisiveness or settlement?"

Rocket near Beirut brings Syrian war closer

June 21, 2013

BEIRUT (AP) — A rocket slammed into a suburb of Beirut on Friday, bringing the conflict in neighboring Syria closer to Lebanon's bustling capital and reviving bitter memories of the country's own devastating civil war.

With skirmishes between Shiites and Sunnis on the rise around the country, religiously mixed and highly vulnerable Lebanon is increasingly buffeted by powerful forces that are dividing the Arab world along sectarian lines.

There were no casualties from the rocket, which struck a Christian area southeast of Beirut overnight, but the incident raised fears that Lebanon was being sucked into a war that has already paralyzed state institutions and strained its economy with the presence of more than a half-million Syrian refugees.

"This is very, very dangerous," said Pierre Ashkar, head of a syndicate of hotel owners, referring to the potential damage to the tourism industry from such rocket attacks. He said his daughter and her husband were among scores who have canceled plans to come Lebanon.

"When our kids can't come to Lebanon, I don't know how a French, British or even a Saudi and Kuwaiti can," he told The Associated Press. For the most part, Lebanon has stayed on the sidelines of the Arab Spring, keeping up its appearance as an oasis of relative stability, which has helped its tourism and entertainment businesses.

The Lebanese — and the tens of thousands of expatriates and Gulf Arab tourists who visit every summer — have learned to live with the country's occasional bouts of upheaval and violence, including huge street protests that followed the assassination of a former prime minister in 2005 and deadly street clashes in 2008, when the militant Shiite Hezbollah group briefly overran parts of Beirut.

Beneath the surface lurk the same forces that devastated the country in its years of civil war, with simmering hatreds still dividing Muslims and Christians, Sunnis and Shiites, and secular and fundamentalist groups.

The Lebanese civil war began in 1975 with clashes between mostly Muslim Palestinian factions and Christian militiamen, and eventually turned into a Christian-Muslim civil war in which external players like Saudi Arabia, Syria and Western countries used the country as a battleground.

The uprising in Syria against President Bashar Assad, which began in March 2011, brought sectarian tensions to the surface and has inflamed rivalries. The two countries share a complex web of political and sectarian ties, and Lebanon is deeply divided into pro- and anti-Assad groups, a legacy of Syria's long dominance of its small neighbor.

Lebanon's Sunni Muslims mostly back the overwhelmingly Sunni rebels in Syria, while many Shiites support Assad, who is a member of Syria's minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Sectarian tensions sharply increased after the Shiite militant group Hezbollah openly joined Assad's forces in fighting the rebels seeking his ouster. Lebanon has seen repeated bursts of violence, but it has mostly been restricted to border areas and the northern city of Tripoli.

Rockets from Syria fall regularly into towns and villages near the border. Last week, the tensions exploded into street clashes in the southern city of Sidon, suggesting the scope of the fighting was widening.

Friday's rocket slammed into a valley southeast of Beirut, causing a blast that reverberated across large parts of the city and surrounding mountains. After hours of searching, Lebanese soldiers found the rocket in Jamhour, a Christian area near the presidential palace, the Defense Ministry and the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahyeh, the military said in a statement. Two rocket launchers still holding one rocket also were found about 10 miles (15 kilometers) to the north of the city, also in a Christian town.

It was the second such attack in less than a month. Two rockets hit Dahyeh on May 26, wounding four, hours after the Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah vowed in a speech to help propel Assad to victory.

The gap widened when Hezbollah fighters were instrumental in a recent Syrian government victory as they helped pro-Assad forces regain control of the strategic town of Qusair near the Lebanese border.

No one claimed responsibility the rocket attacks near Beirut, but rebels in Syria have vowed to retaliate and have sent rockets slamming into Hezbollah strongholds in northeastern Lebanon. Friday's attack may also have been an attempt to drag Christian areas into the conflict, or perhaps was intended to send a message to Lebanese President Michel Suleiman, a Christian.

Rebel groups have warned Suleiman to rein in Hezbollah. Under pressure, the president has been increasingly critical of Hezbollah involvement in Syria; on Thursday, he said the group was making a "mistake" and urged it to leave Syria.

The conflict has paralyzed Lebanese institutions. In downtown Beirut, Lebanese protesters continued a sit-in for a second day Friday near the parliament building to demand elections that originally were scheduled in June. Their chants on both evenings were drowned out by music blasting from a nearby rooftop nightclub, a sign of Beirut's bon vivant lifestyle struggling to prevail.

Last month, the 128-member parliament extended its term by a year and a half, put off the balloting because of the deteriorating security conditions in the country. The demonstrators, who clashed with police Thursday, say the extension was unconstitutional. They have set up tents, blocking a side road in the city center.

Ali Jammoul, a 22-year-old activist and biology student taking part in the sit-in, said he fears the Shiite-Sunni sectarian hatreds will lead to a cycle of revenge killings even uglier than Lebanon's civil war, which is believed to have killed 150,000 people.

"The Lebanese are hostage to external dictates. They are spectators waiting to see what is going to happen in the battle (for Syria)," he said, adding that Lebanon, with its weak government, was powerless to stay out.

Ashkar, the tourism official, said Beirut is typically packed in the summer with more than 100 percent capacity but now is at only 40 percent occupancy, most of them business travelers. Hezbollah's public involvement in the war in Syria, he said, was a big blow to the industry that contributes 20 percent to the national income.

"This is really the worst season" since 1992 after the restoration of the tourism industry following the end of civil war, he said. For the first time in years, all of Lebanon's hotels, with their 22,000 rooms, are partially closed or operating at reduced capacity, he added.

The tension has risen to a point where politicians on TV talk shows regularly throw invectives, and sometimes water glasses, at each other, or engage in a few fistfights. The violence prompted organizers of Lebanon's famous Baalbek International Festival to announce plans to move the annual music show out of the ancient city with its Roman ruins because of its proximity to the Syrian border. Earlier this month, 18 rockets and mortar rounds fired from Syria hit the area, about 15 kilometers (10 miles) from the Syrian frontier.

"The situation in Baalbek does not permit holding the festival, and we are now looking for a new venue," an official with the festival said Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to talk to reporters.

At least one participant, American soprano Renee Fleming, has canceled a planned concert at the festival, which is usually held under the towering columns of the Roman Temple of Jupiter, citing deteriorating security conditions. The festival is scheduled to begin in August.

Many Lebanese have despaired over the violence and the country's future. "Half of my family left recently," said Jammoul, who was among bottle-throwing protesters who clashed with police overnight. "My brother was my comrade in the streets. ... I cried when I returned to the streets after a week and he wasn't next to me, when I got beaten and he wasn't near me," he said.

Associated Press writer Bassem Mroue contributed to this report.

Lebanese army seals parliament after protests, Syria-linked tension

By Dominic Evans
BEIRUT | Fri Jun 21, 2013

(Reuters) - The Lebanese army sealed off Beirut's parliamentary district with razor wire and threatened stern action against violence on Friday after a night of unrest stoked by the war in Syria and political paralysis at home.

Around 100 protesters, angered by the postponement of June's parliamentary election until next year, scuffled with police on Thursday night near parliament. Twenty camped out overnight outside the ring of barbed wire, vowing to maintain the protest.

As the largely peaceful demonstration unfolded in central Beirut, protesters blocked roads with burning tires elsewhere in the capital and in Bekaa Valley towns in eastern Lebanon.

Demonstrators said they were acting in solidarity with residents of the Sunni Muslim Bekaa town of Arsal, which they say has been cut off by security forces investigating the shooting of four Shi'ite Muslim men on Sunday.

Sectarian violence has intensified across Lebanon and particularly in the Bekaa region because of the conflict raging across the border in Syria, where Lebanon's Shi'ite militia Hezbollah and Lebanese Sunni gunmen have joined opposing sides of the 27-month-old civil war.

Rockets from suspected Syrian rebel positions have hit Shi'ite towns in Lebanon since Hezbollah intervened decisively to recapture the Syrian border town of Qusair for President Bashar al-Assad's forces earlier this month.

The army also discovered a rocket launcher in an area east of Beirut on Friday. The rocket was still in place, and apparently had not gone off due to a technical fault, a security source said.

The fighting in Syria has already driven half a million Syrian refugees into Lebanon and worsened a political stalemate which forced the election delay and held up efforts to form a new government. Former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, a Sunni leader, warned this week of the potential for "state collapse".

President Michel Suleiman has appealed to Hezbollah to bring its fighters home from Syria, saying that further entanglement there by the Iranian-backed movement will fuel instability in Lebanon, still scarred by its own 1975-1990 civil war.

ARMY WILL CONFRONT "OUTLAWS"

The army said several military posts and patrols were targeted on Thursday night by protesters, some of them armed, and four soldiers were wounded in exchanges of gunfire.

Security sources said at least two demonstrators were hurt in a protest near the main border crossing with Syria at Masnaa.

"The army leadership again urges citizens to be calm and not to follow rumors and sectarian emotions," the military said in a statement. "It will not be lenient in confronting with force any outlaws or those who harm the armed forces."

The statement said gunmen fired on army posts in three towns close to the Masnaa border crossing early on Friday. The army returned fire and arrested 22 suspects in raids following the incidents.

Travelers trying to reach Lebanon from Syria on Friday morning said the frontier was closed for several hours due to the skirmishes, but reopened later in the day.

Army commander General Jean Kahwaji was quoted by the local As-Safir newspaper as saying the military would not tolerate any threats to Lebanon's security during what he described as "very critical and very difficult" times.

In central Beirut, activists said they would keep up their protest against the 17-month extension of parliament, agreed by politicians after they failed to break a deadlock over planned changes to the electoral law.

"We called for a protest yesterday against the extension and against the violation on Lebanon's democracy," protester Marwan Maalouf said. "This is a new coup against the republic.

"Security forces used force against the protesters so we decided to set up tents here in a peaceful way to protest the extension. There is a year and a half, we won't let them rest."

(Editing by Alistair Lyon)

Source: Reuters.
Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/21/us-syria-crisis-lebanon-idUSBRE95K0GS20130621.

Lebanon feeling heat from Syrian war

June 19, 2013

BEIRUT, Lebanon, June 19 (UPI) -- Lebanese leaders need to work quickly to prevent sectarian conflict from erupting as the threat from Syria's war moves closer, the speaker of Parliament said.

Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said Wednesday there were growing concerns about "sectarian strife" in Lebanon.

Lebanon's political structure is divided along religious lines. Those divisions have been strained by the role Shiite movement Hezbollah has played in Syria's civil war.

Hezbollah says it is fighting alongside pro-government forces in Syria to protect Lebanon from Syrian rebel groups, some of which are aligned with al-Qaida. Conflict has erupted, however, between pro- and anti-Syria elements near Lebanese-Syrian border.

Berri was quoted by the official National News Agency as calling "for doubling efforts to put an end to such attempts that threaten [to destabilize] the country."

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said from Beirut the refugee crisis was compounding the issue for Lebanon. He said Lebanon is on pace to host more than 1 million Syrian refugees by the end of the year.

Guterres said the threat of spillover from the Syrian war "is now becoming a harsh reality" for countries like Lebanon.

"The international community must overcome its divisions and come together to stop the fighting if we want to prevent the flames of war from spreading across the Middle East," he said in a statement.

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2013/06/19/Lebanon-feeling-heat-from-Syrian-war/UPI-95621371656907/.

Anti-Hezbollah protester killed in Lebanon

June 10, 2013

BEIRUT (AP) — Men wielding batons and wearing yellow arm bands evoking Lebanon's Hezbollah attacked protesters outside the Iranian Embassy in Beirut Sunday during a rally against the militant group's participation in the Syrian civil war. One protester was killed, a senior Lebanese military official and witnesses said.

A military statement said the protesters had just arrived at the embassy area when clashes broke out and a civilian opened fire. The embassy is in a predominantly pro-Hezbollah area. Witnesses saw men wearing yellow armbands — the color of Hezbollah's flag — attacking the protesters with batons. It was unclear if they were affiliated with the militant Shiite group, and the identity of the gunman was unknown, a senior security official said.

The official identified the man killed as a 28-year-old member of the small Lebanese Option Party, which had called for the anti-Hezbollah protest. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

The Syria conflict is increasingly spilling over into Lebanon, home to a fragile mosaic of more than a dozen religious and ethnic groups. Hezbollah's overt participation in the conflict, backing forces of Syria's President Bashar Assad in a successful campaign to drive rebels out of Qusair near the Lebanese border, heightened tensions.

The Obama administration could decide this week to approve lethal aid for the Syrian rebels, officials said Sunday. Secretary of State John Kerry postponed a planned trip Monday to Israel and three other Mideast countries to participate in White House discussions, said officials who weren't authorized to speak publicly on the matter and demanded anonymity.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement Sunday that it backed the Lebanese Red Cross in evacuating since Friday 87 Syrians seriously wounded in the fighting in Qusair to hospitals in Lebanon.

The leader of Hezbollah, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, said during the battle for Qusair that he would side with Assad until the rebels are defeated. Assad's Syria is Hezbollah's main ally and supplier of weapons.

Gunmen from rival religious sects have gone to Syria to fight on the rebel side. Rebels have threatened to target Hezbollah's bases in Lebanon. Clashes in northern Lebanon between rival Lebanese groups since last month claimed more than 28 lives, and rockets have targeted Hezbollah strongholds.

Hezbollah's rivals have increased their criticism, deepening a political stalemate and postponing elections for 17 months. The Lebanese Option Party is headed by a Shiite politician, Ahmad El Assaad, who has long been opposed to Hezbollah. Sunday's clash outside the Iranian Embassy marked rare fighting between two opposing Shiite groups.

The official Lebanese National News Agency said the army cordoned off the area of the clashes in southern Beirut. The private Al-Jadeed Lebanese TV said a girl who was protesting was also wounded. The station said the protester who was killed was shot twice in the leg, once in the back, and was hit on the head with a baton.

The protest at the embassy coincided with another small rally in downtown Beirut also criticizing Hezbollah's military intervention in Syria's conflict. Dozens of protesters, including many Syrians, converged on Beirut's central Martyrs Square where a large banner read: "Rejecting Hezbollah's fighting in Syria."

"Those fighting in Syria are not Lebanese. Their culture, their flag, money and weapons are Iranian," said Saleh el-Mashnouk, an ardent critic of Hezbollah. "We are here to erase the shame that struck Lebanon because of them."

Lebanese protester Samara el-Hariri, 31, said Syria's war is hurting Lebanon's economy and increasing sectarian tension. "My country is stricken," she said. Shiite Iran, Hezbollah's patron, has strongly backed Assad, who belongs to a Shiite offshoot.

The fighting in Syria has claimed more than 80,000 lives and displaced several million people. Beside Lebanon, it has also threatened to spill into neighboring countries, like Israel and Turkey. In Syria, fighting between government troops and rebels raged in different provinces, including near the capital, Damascus, and in the northern Aleppo province. Pro-regime media outlets said that after securing control of Qusair, government forces are preparing to move to recapture the contested city of Aleppo next. Activists said there were no signs of a new push on the city or its surrounding areas.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of Syrians inside the country for information, said six regime fighters were killed in clashes in Aleppo. The city has been carved up into areas controlled by rebels and the regime, and families have been displaced by shelling.

The Observatory also documented a rare case of a public killing of a 15-year-old youth by Islamist rebel fighters in the city of Aleppo. The center said the gunmen detained Mohammed Kattaa late Saturday, accusing him of being an "infidel" for mentioning Islam's Prophet Muhammad in vain.

The witnesses told the center the gunmen overheard the teenager arguing with a colleague, telling him that he would not lend him money even if "Muhammad comes back to earth," a common phrase used to describe an impossible task.

The men then brought Kattan back to the coffee shop where he works, with his shirt over his face and his back covered in marks from whips, the witnesses told the Observatory. The militants threatened the same punishment for anyone who commits blasphemy, the witnesses said. Then they shot the boy in front of his parents and a crowd before fleeing the scene.

It was not clear which rebel group the gunmen belonged to. Rights groups have warned against rising abuses by rebel fighters, including killing of captured regime soldiers or allied fighters. Kattan's case was a rare example of rebels killing a civilian for blasphemy.

Associated Press writers Zeina Karam and Yasmine Saker, and Bradley Klapper in Washington, contributed to this report.

Lebanese women fight revolution through football

by Jens Juul Petersen
04 October 2011

Beirut - Lebanese women are fighting a silent revolution on the football field through the popular club program of the Cross Cultures Project Association (CCPA) in Lebanon, which provides educational activities for those in post-conflict countries.

Farah and Mirna are two young women on an important mission: they want to change Lebanese society by promoting gender equality and giving young girls the opportunities they didn't have themselves.

“We are here at the CCPA seminar because we want to change something,” says 28-year-old Mirna. Together with her friend Farah, Mirna is taking part in a seminar in Beirut for volunteers in the CCPA Popular Club program. The two school teachers want to establish their own sports club for girls in their hometown. “There is nothing like this in our town. All sports clubs are for boys and men, but we want to make a club for girls – and only girls!” says Farah, who has been living in a little town in South Lebanon her entire life and is fed up with how her society views and treats girls and women. “We have had no opportunities for sports or physical activities. It has been very frustrating,” she says.

CCPA Lebanon is focusing on bringing together a mixed group of children who play in the same club regardless of gender, talent, social standing, religious and ethnic distinctions. The CCPA popular club project is working to support the development of an active civil society based on diversity and equality, where females are encouraged to take an active part in order to promote gender equality and non-discrimination.

The idea of popular clubs for girls is revolutionary – especially in the south. The two women’s hometown is located in a conservative area around the city of Tyre, where cultural mores have made it difficult for CCPA Lebanon to organize sports activities for girls and women. The local CCPA coordinator Adel Saad has experienced how complicated it is to attract females to sports activities, not only in the south but all over the country: “This is Lebanon, and it is unusual for girls to participate in sports outside school. We need to change this, but it should be done slowly,” says Adel.

“There is an idea here that girls who wear the hijab (headscarf) don’t play sports,” Mirna adds. “Men think that we are not interested and don’t like being active, but this is so wrong. We know many, many women who are like us.” Adds Farah, “I want to change the impression that girls who wear hijab can’t do anything except sit at home and be quiet. By playing sports we can change this and express ourselves!”

Involving women in sports is only a small step for better conditions and equality for women in Lebanon, but it is a clever way to start changing society. In this very volatile country everything tends to be politicized  but sports are seen as far removed from politics and therefore safe. Mirna and Farah chose to take active part in society through CCPA Lebanon because of the reputation of the organisation in the area.

Many people in Lebanon are not ready to deal with strong and independent women doing sports. Even these two women had to struggle before going to the CCPA seminar in Beirut, far away from their hometown. “Our families were against it,” Farah says. “Staying at a hotel with 50 men is not a good thing to do for young decent women. We couldn't convince our families to allow us to go, so in the end we just said, ‘Enough. We will go whether you like it or not.’”

Farah and Mirna have learned a lot at the seminar, but it is not only the women who have something to learn. According to Farah, male instructors and trainers also have many things to learn: “Some of the men here are not used to have women around them. But they have to learn this: women are also allowed on the playing field and to take part in society.”

The small liberation movement for Farah, Mirna and their Lebanese sisters has started. There is still a long way to go, but Farah is optimistic and motivated. “We will need time. Things don’t change overnight here, but we know that we can do it. We know that we can change how other people are seeing women. We can’t lose faith – and we can’t fail! But we need patience."

Source: Common Ground.
Link: http://www.commongroundnews.org/article.php?id=30474&lan=en&sp=0.

Lebanon launches major security operation

October 22, 2012

BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanese troops launched a major security operation on Monday to open all roads and force gunmen off the streets, trying to contain an outburst of violence set off by the assassination of a top intelligence official who was a powerful opponent of Syria. Sectarian clashes killed at least five people.

Opponents of Syria have blamed the regime in Damascus for the killing of Lebanese Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan in a Beirut car bomb on Friday. With Lebanon already tense and deeply divided over the civil war next door, the assassination has threatened to drag the country back into the kind of sectarian strife that plagued it for decades — much of it linked to Syria.

"The nation is passing through a crucial and critical period and tension has risen in some areas to unprecedented levels," the army said in a statement. It urged politicians to be careful not to incite violence "because the fate of the nation is on the edge."

"Security is a red line," the statement said, adding that strict measures are being taken to "prevent Lebanon from being an arena for settling regional problems." Cracks of gunfire rang out in Beirut as soldiers and armored personnel carriers with heavy machine guns took up position on major thoroughfares and dismantled roadblocks. The state news agency reported sporadic gunfire in parts of Beirut and around the northern city of Tripoli.

Tripoli saw clashes between two neighborhoods that support opposite sides in Syria's conflict and have a decades-long history of shooting at each other. Four people were killed in the fighting between the Sunni neighborhood of Bab Tabbaneh and the adjacent Alawite neighborhood of Jabal Mohsen, which supports the Syrian regime.

Lebanon and Syria share similar sectarian divides that have fed tensions in both countries. Most of Lebanon's Sunnis have backed Syria's mainly Sunni rebels, while Lebanese Shiites tend to back President Bashar Assad who belongs to the minority Alawite sect — an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Tripoli residents said scores of soldiers deployed around the city in an attempt to bring back calm. The military also set up checkpoints, searched cars and asked people for identity cards. Security officials also said one man was killed in the Wadi Zayneh area north of the southern city of Sidon. They said the clashes also wounded at least six people in Beirut and 11 in Tripoli. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Al-Hassan, the assassinated intelligence official, was a Sunni who challenged Syria and its powerful Lebanese ally, the Shiite militant group Hezbollah. Al-Hassan's killing has imperiled Lebanon's fragile political balance. Many politicians blamed Syria for the killing and angry protesters tried to storm the government palace after al-Hassan's funeral on Sunday, venting their rage at leaders they consider puppets of a murderous Syrian regime. But they were pushed back by troops who fired their guns in the air and filled the street with tear gas.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati, a Sunni, told As-Safir newspaper that when he took up his post last year, he intended to protect all Lebanese, particularly Sunnis. "I was convinced that through this mission, I am protecting my country, my people and especially fellow members of my sect," he said.

The prime minister of Lebanon is usually a Sunni according to a sectarian division of top posts in the state. Over the past year, pro-Syrian Hezbollah and its allies have come to dominate the government.

On Sunday night, a group of anti-Syrian protesters started an open-ended sit-in outside Mikati's house in his hometown of Tripoli. The protesters said they will only end the sit-in when Mikati resigns.

Ambassadors of Britain, the U.S., Russia, China and France and the U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon met President Michel Suleiman to express support for him. "The permanent members at the United Nations call upon all the parties in Lebanon to preserve stability," Derek Plumbly, the U.N. representative, told reporters in Arabic while surrounded by the five ambassadors. "We strongly condemn any attempt to shake Lebanon's stability."

Later in the day, Mikati met with Suleiman but did not make any statements afterward. An Associated Press photographer saw dozens of gunmen roaming the streets on Monday in Beirut's predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Tariq Jadideh, where fighting has taken place. Local Sunni leaders were calling the gunmen by telephone urging them to pull out of the streets.

In some roads around Tariq Jadideh, masked Sunni gunmen set up checkpoints, stopping cars and asking people about their destination and where they were coming from. A woman who lives in the neighborhood said the fighting began shortly after midnight and lasted until sunrise.

"We couldn't sleep because of the shooting. There were also some booms," she said, referring to rocket-propelled grenades. She asked that her name not be used for fear of reprisals.

Officials: 6 hurt in overnight clashes in Beirut

October 22, 2012

BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanese security officials say overnight clashes in Beirut between Sunni and Shiite gunmen have wounded at least six people.

The officials say troops managed to separate the gunmen and calm returned Monday morning to the two neighborhoods in the capital where fighting had erupted. The officials also reported heavy overnight clashes in the northern city of Tripoli. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to the media.

Lebanon has been boiling since Friday after an anti-Syrian top intelligence official was assassinated in a Beirut car bombing. The assassination has threatened to shatter the country's fragile political balance.

Many politicians have blamed Syria for the killing and angry protesters tried to storm the government palace after Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan funeral on Sunday.

Lebanese on edge after car bomb linked to Syria

October 21, 2012

BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanese protesters erected flaming roadblocks and gunmen roamed the streets on Saturday in a city on edge after the assassination of a top security official in a powerful car bomb the prime minister linked to the civil war in neighboring Syria.

The crisis raised a terrifying specter for Lebanese who fear their country could easily plunge back into cycles of violence and reprisal that have haunted it for decades. Friday's blast in the heart of Beirut's Christian area killed eight people, including the country's intelligence chief, Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan. It was the deadliest bombing in Beirut in four years, shattering the country's uneasy calm.

The government declared a national day of mourning for the victims Saturday, but protesters burned tires and set up roadblocks in anger. Sharbal Abdo, who lives in the neighborhood where the bomb went off, brought his 6-year-old son, Chris, and 12-year-old daughter, Jane, to see the destruction Saturday.

"They were very afraid yesterday," he said. "They need to face this situation. It may be their future." Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Saturday linked the bombing to al-Hassan's high-profile investigation this summer that uncovered what authorities called a plot by Syria to provoke chaos in Lebanon with bombings and assassinations.

"I don't want to prejudge the investigation, but in fact we cannot separate yesterday's crime from the revelation of the explosions that could have happened," Mikati said at a news conference following an emergency Cabinet meeting.

Mikati, who opponents believe is too close to Syria and the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, offered to resign after the bombing, but was asked by President Michel Suleiman to stay. Al-Hassan's probe led to the arrest of former Information Minister Michel Samaha, one of Assad's most loyal allies in Lebanon. Samaha, who is in custody, is accused of plotting a wave of attacks in Lebanon at Syria's behest. Indicted in absentia in the August sweep was Syrian Brig. Gen. Ali Mamlouk, one of Assad's highest aides.

Samaha's arrest was an embarrassing blow to Syria, which has long acted with impunity in Lebanon. Syria has powerful allies here, including the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which now dominates the government.

For much of the past 30 years, Lebanese have lived under Syrian military and political domination. Damascus' hold on Lebanon began to slip in 2005, when former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated in truck bomb along Beirut's Mediterranean waterfront. Syria denied having any role. But broad public outrage in Lebanon forced Syria to withdraw its troops from the country.

The killings of anti-Syrian figures continued for years, however, and Assad has managed to maintain his influence in Lebanon through Hezbollah and other allies. Now, as the Syrian civil war rages just across the border, Lebanon increasingly is getting sucked in.

Mikati said Saturday he had offered to resign after Friday's car bomb, but said Suleiman asked him not to plunge the country into more uncertainty. The bombing raised fears that the crisis could unleash Lebanon's sectarian tensions, a dire scenario for a country that endured a devastating civil war of its own from 1975-1990.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon spoke Saturday with Suleiman and stressed the importance of "dissociating the country from regional events" and in Lebanon's sovereignty, a U.N. spokesman said. The Syrian unrest has already enflamed tensions here. Many of Lebanon's Sunni Muslims have backed Syria's mainly Sunni rebels, while Shiite Muslims have tended to back Assad. Al-Hassan was a Sunni whose stances were widely seen to oppose Syria and Hezbollah.

Hundreds of Sunni protesters marched in force through downtown Beirut Saturday, placing the blame squarely on Syria and Hezbollah for al-Hassan's killing. "Hezbollah is a terrorist group!" they shouted.

Police were trying to identify the bombers and find out how they managed to target al-Hassan, an important security figure who traveled under great protection and who likely took more precautions following Samaha's arrest.

"We don't expect to reveal the crime within few hours," police commander Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi told Future TV. "The investigation is like a puzzle. You collect the pieces and put them together in a logical way."

Al-Hassan had many potential enemies. Besides his investigation of Samaha, al-Hassan helped investigate the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a powerful Sunni figure. An international tribunal indicted four members of Hezbollah for Hariri's killing, although the group denies involvement.

His department also had a role in breaking up several Israeli spy rings inside Lebanon in recent years, Lebanese officials said. Al-Hassan, 47, who was married with two children, is expected to be buried Sunday next to Hariri's tomb in downtown Beirut. His family arrived in Lebanon on Saturday on a private plane from Paris, where they live.

Lebanon's top Sunni cleric, Grand Mufti Mohammed Rashid Kabbani, condemned the assassination, calling it a "criminal explosion that targets Lebanon and its people." He also called for self-restraint, saying "the criminal will get his punishment sooner or later."

But many Lebanese were seething with anger. In the eastern town of Marj, protesters tried to storm an office of the pro-Syrian Itihad group. Lebanese soldiers pushed them away, wounding five protesters, security officials said. Dozens of people who marched in protest in the border town of Moqueibleh came under fire from the Syrian side of the border, forcing them to disperse, the officials said.

The highway linking central Beirut with the city's international airport was closed, as well as the highway that links the capital with Syria, the officials said. In the predominantly Sunni northern city of Tripoli, gunmen were roaming the streets on motorcycles and opening fire in the air.

The army issued a statement urging Lebanese to overcome the crisis and coordinate among themselves in order to give a chance to the "the criminal killers who tried through the crime to incite strife and split the country."

Associated Press writer Barbara Surk contributed to this report.

Protesters block roads in Lebanon after car bomb

October 20, 2012

BEIRUT (AP) — Protesters burned tires and set up roadblocks around Lebanon on Saturday in a sign of boiling anger over a massive car bomb that killed a top security official and seven other people a day earlier — a devastating attack that threatened to bring Syria's civil war to Lebanon.

The Lebanese Cabinet was scheduled to hold an emergency meeting Saturday as the country's opposition called for Prime Minister Najib Mikati to resign. The state-run National News Agency said security commanders would attend the meeting to discuss how to keep the peace.

The government declared a national day of mourning for the victims, who included Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan, head of the intelligence division of Lebanon's domestic security forces. Dozens were wounded in Friday's blast in Beirut's mainly Christian Achrafieh neighborhood.

Many observers said the attack appeared to have links to the Syrian civil war, which has been raging for 19 months. Al-Hassan, 47, headed an investigation over the summer that led to the arrest of former Information Minister Michel Samaha, one of Syrian President Bashar Assad's most loyal allies in Lebanon.

Samaha, who is in custody, is accused of plotting a campaign of bombings and assassinations to spread sectarian violence in Lebanon at Syria's behest. Also indicted in the August sweep was Syrian Brig. Gen. Ali Mamlouk, one of Assad's highest aides.

Lebanon's fractious politics are closely entwined with Syria's. The countries share a web of political and sectarian ties and rivalries, often causing events on one side of the border to echo on the other. Lebanon's opposition is an anti-Syrian bloc, while the prime minister and much of the government are pro-Syrian.

The civil war in Syria has laid bare Lebanon's sectarian tensions as well. Many of Lebanon's Sunnis have backed Syria's mainly Sunni rebels, while Shiites have tended to back Assad. Al-Hassan was a Sunni whose stances were widely seen to oppose Syria and the country's most powerful ally in Lebanon, the Shiite militant group Hezbollah.

On Friday, protesters in mostly Sunni areas closed roads with burning tires and rocks in Beirut, the southern city of Sidon, the northern city of Tripoli and several towns in the eastern Bekaa Valley.

The highway linking central Beirut with the city's international airport was closed, as well as the highway that links the capital with Syria, the officials said on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Rafik Khoury, editor of the independent Al-Anwar daily, said the assassination was an attempt to draw Lebanon into the conflict in Syria, which has been the most serious threat to the Assad family's 40-year dynasty.

"The side that carried the assassination knows the reactions and dangerous repercussions and is betting that it will happen. Strife is wanted in Lebanon," Khoury wrote.

Beirut car bomb kills top official, 7 others

October 19, 2012

BEIRUT (AP) — A car bomb ripped through Beirut on Friday, killing a top security official and seven others, shearing the balconies off apartment buildings and sending bloodied residents staggering into the streets in the most serious blast the Lebanese capital has seen in four years.

Dozens of people were wounded in the attack, which the state-run news agency said targeted the convoy of Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan, the head of the intelligence division of Lebanon's domestic security forces.

Many Lebanese quickly raised the possibility the violence was connected to the civil war in neighboring Syria, which has sent destabilizing ripples through Lebanon for the past 19 months. Al-Hassan led an investigation over the summer that implicated a pro-Syrian Lebanese politician and one of the highest aides to Syrian President Bashar Assad in plots to carry out bombings in Lebanon.

Friday's blast was also a reminder of Lebanon's grim history, when the 1975-1990 civil war made the country notorious for kidnappings, car bombs and political assassinations. Even since the war's end, Lebanon has been a proxy battleground for regional conflict, and the Mediterranean seaside capital has been prey to sudden, surprising and often unexplained violence shattering periods of calm.

"Whenever there is a problem in Syria they want to bring it to us," said Karin Sabaha Gemayel, a secratary at a law firm a block from the bombing site, where the street was transformed into a swath of rubble, twisted metal and charred vehicles.

"But you always hope it will not happen to us. Not again," she said. The blast ripped through a narrow street at mid-afternoon in Beirut's mainly Christian Achrafieh neighborhood, an area packed with cafes and shops. Doors and windows were shattered for blocks, and several blackened cars appeared to have been catapulted through the air.

Bloodied residents fled their homes while others tried to help the seriously wounded. One little girl, apparently unconscious and bleeding from her head, was carried to an ambulance in the arms of rescue workers, her white sneakers stained with blood.

"I was standing nearby in Sassine Square and I heard a big explosion and I ran straight to it," resident Elie Khalil said. He said he saw at least 15 bloodied people in a nearby parking lot before medics arrived and took them to a hospital.

Al-Hassan's body was so disfigured in the blast that his bodyguards only realized it was him when they recognized his sneakers, a paramedic at the scene told The Associated Press. The paramedic, who saw the body, spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

A Lebanese security official said al-Hassan had just returned earlier Friday morning from Paris, where he was visiting family. He was either on his way from or to work in a non-armored car with his driver, who also was among the dead, the official said. He also spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give information to the media.

Eight people were killed, including al-Hassan, and 78 wounded, the state-run National News Agency said.. Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zouebi denounced the bombing, calling it a "terrorist and cowardly" attack.

Syria's top ally in Lebanon, the Shiite Hezbollah movement, also condemned the attack, expressing its "state of great shock over this terrible terrorist crime." It called on the authorities to catch the perpetrators and on all political forces in Lebanon to work against "every conspirator against the security, the life, the safety and security of the nation."

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland condemned the blast "in strongest terms." She said the U.S. had no information about the perpetrators. Al-Hassan had headed an investigation into bombing plots that led to the Aug. 9 arrest of former Information Minister Michel Samaha, one of Syria's most loyal allies in Lebanon, who has long acted as an unofficial media adviser to Assad. According to a senior Lebanese police official, Samaha confessed to having personally transported explosives in his car from Syria to Lebanon with the purpose of killing Lebanese personalities at the behest of Syria.

A military court has since indicted Samaha and Syrian Brig. Gen. Ali Mamlouk of plotting to carry out terrorist attacks. Mamlouk, who was appointed recently by Assad to head Syria's National Security Bureau, was indicted in absentia.

Tensions have been soaring in Lebanon over the conflict next door, and clashes have erupted between Assad supporters and backers of the rebellion against his regime. Syria and Lebanon share a complex web of political and sectarian ties and rivalries, often causing events on one side of the border to echo on the other. Many of Lebanon's Sunnis have backed Syria's mainly Sunni rebels, while Shiites have tended to back Assad.

Lebanon was hit by a wave of bombings and other attacks that began in 2005 with a massive suicide blast that killed former prime minister Rafik Hariri and more than 20 other people in downtown Beirut. In the following years, a string of anti-Syrian figures were assassinated, several in car bombings. Many Lebanese blamed Damascus for the killings, though Syria denied responsibility.

The last serious bombing was in 2008, when a car bomb killed a senior Lebanese anti-terror police official who was investigating dozens of other bombings. Four others were killed and 38 wounded in the blast in the Christian Hazmieh neighborhood.

Since then, Lebanese saw a relative calm in violence. After the uprising against Assad began in March 2011, there have been sporadic gunbattles between pro- and anti-Assad factions, particularly in northern Lebanon.

"I'm very worried about the country after this explosion," Beirut resident Charbel Khadra said Friday. "I'm worried the explosions will return — and this is just the first one."

AP writers Elizabeth A. Kennedy, Ben Hubbard and Barbara Surk contributed to this report from Beirut.

Hezbollah says it sent drone over Israel

October 11, 2012

BEIRUT (AP) — The leader of Hezbollah claimed responsibility Thursday for launching an Iranian-made drone aircraft into Israeli airspace earlier this week, adding more tension to an already explosive Mideast atmosphere.

Sheik Hassan Nasrallah warned that it would not be the last such operation by his Lebanese militant group. Israeli warplanes shot down the unmanned plane, but the infiltration marked a rare breach of Israel's tightly guarded airspace. Hezbollah had been the leading suspect because of its arsenal of sophisticated Iranian weapons and a history of trying to deploy similar aircraft.

With a formidable arsenal that rivals that of the Lebanese army, Hezbollah is already under pressure in Lebanon from rivals who accuse it of putting Lebanon at risk of getting sucked into regional turmoil. Confirmation that Hezbollah was behind the drone could put the group under further strain internally as it pursues its longstanding conflict with Israel.

Hezbollah, a powerful Shiite group committed to Israel's destruction, has long served as an Iranian proxy along Israel's northern border. It is also seen as a close ally of the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Israel accuses the Assad government of allowing Iran to ferry weapons to Hezbollah through its territory.

Israel and Hezbollah fought a brutal monthlong war in mid-2006. Hundreds of people were killed, and Hezbollah fired several thousand rockets and missiles into Israel before the conflict ended in a stalemate.

Israel routinely sends F-16 fighter planes over Lebanon, in violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution that ended the 2006 war. The Israeli planes have often broken the sound barrier over Beirut and other places as a show of strength, most recently after the drone incident.

"This statement today is a claim of responsibility by the Islamic resistance for this qualitative operation" of dispatching the drone, Nasrallah said in a televised address late Thursday. "Today we are uncovering a small part of our capabilities, and we shall keep many more hidden," he said. "It is our natural right to send other reconnaissance flights inside occupied Palestine ... This is not the first time and will not be the last. We can reach any place we want" in Israel, he said.

He said the aircraft was launched from Lebanese territory and flew "tens of kilometers" over sensitive Israeli installations before it was discovered and shot down by the Israeli air force near the Dimona nuclear reactor in Israel's southern desert.

He dismissed an Israeli military statement that it began tracking the aircraft over the Mediterranean but waited until it was over an empty desert area to bring it down in order to avert casualties on the ground.

Nasrallah claimed the group had more surprises and would not hesitate to use them in any future war with Israel. Launching the drone was a rare and provocative move by the Lebanese militants at a time of soaring regional tensions, with both Syria and Iran under intense international pressure.

Nasrallah said the aircraft was made in Iran and assembled by Hezbollah, adding that it was much more sophisticated than drones it sent before. Hezbollah has attempted to send unmanned aircraft over Israel on several occasions, dating back to 2004. Nasrallah has claimed that the group's drones were capable of carrying explosives and striking deep into Israel.

Israel has said the latest drone was not carrying explosives and appeared to be on a reconnaissance mission. The last known attempt by Hezbollah to use a drone took place during the 2006 war, when Israel shot down an Iranian-made pilotless aircraft that entered its airspace.

Touring southern Israel on Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised efforts to prevent land infiltrations from Egypt. He mentioned that Israel has been equally successful "in the air, just like we thwarted the Hezbollah attempt last weekend," his first public statement blaming Hezbollah.

Hezbollah was formed to oppose Israel's occupation of south Lebanon in the 1980s, and the two sides have a bitter history. Hezbollah has accused Israel of assassinating a top Hezbollah operative in 2008 in Syria. The group and Lebanese officials say they have broken up several Israeli spy rings inside Lebanon over the past few years.

Israel charges that Hezbollah, with Iranian backing, was behind a string of attempted attacks on Israeli diplomatic targets in India, Thailand and the former Soviet republic of Georgia, plus a deadly bombing this year that killed five Israeli tourists in a Bulgarian resort.

Last week, Israel announced the arrest of an Arab citizen it accused of spying for Hezbollah, the latest in a string of such cases. Nasrallah also denied reports that Hezbollah members were fighting alongside Assad's forces against rebels in Syria.

The reports gained new urgency in the past weeks after Hezbollah buried several of its members, saying they died while performing their "jihadi duty." Lebanese officials said they died in Syria. He said those killed were among 30,000 Lebanese who live in Syrian territory along the border with Lebanon and were defending themselves against repeated attacks by gunmen in Syria.

"Until this moment we did not enter the fight alongside the (Syrian) regime," Nasrallah said, but did not preclude the possibility that the group might do so in the future.

AP writer Aron Heller in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Lebanon demands explanation from Iran over troops

September 17, 2012

BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanese President Michel Suleiman has asked for official clarifications from Iran over statements by a senior commander that they have military advisers in Lebanon.

A statement released by Suleiman's office says the president made his comments Monday while receiving Iran's ambassador to Lebanon Ghazanfar Roknabadi. The top commander of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard said Sunday that his force has high-level advisers in Lebanon and Syria. Gen. Mohammed Ali Jafari's comments marked the clearest indication of Iran's direct assistance to its main Arab allies, Damascus and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

He told reporters that the Guard's Quds force have been in Syria and Lebanon as advisers for a long time, but was not more specific. The statement said Ambassador Roknabadi denied there were advisers in Lebanon.

Syrian civil war shakes Damascus-Beirut ties

August 22, 2012

BEIRUT (AP) — The Syrian civil war has spilled over into Lebanon, bringing with it sectarian street clashes, mob violence and general government paralysis in Beirut.

But it was the dramatic arrest earlier this month of a former Lebanese government minister and prominent supporter of Syria's embattled president that has suggested the conflict may be causing Lebanon to slip further away from Damascus' long domination.

The bloodshed in Syria has drawn Lebanon deeper into the unrest — a troubling sign for a country that has gone through its own 15-year civil war and has an explosive sectarian mix as well as deep divisions between pro- and anti-Syrian factions, many of which are armed.

The chaos could give Sunni Muslim fighters in northern Lebanon more leeway to establish supply lines to the rebels inside Syria in their battle to oust President Bashar Assad. Tensions and intermittent fighting in the northern Lebanon city of Tripoli continued Wednesday following two days of clashes between pro- and anti-Assad groups that killed at least six people and wounded more than 70.

In New York, United Nations political chief Jeffrey Feltman told the Security Council Wednesday that as the crisis in Syria continues to deteriorate, "the situation in Lebanon has become more precarious and the need for continued international support to the government and the Lebanese Armed Forces increasingly important."

Feltman said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has expressed concern about two-way arms smuggling across the Syrian-Lebanese border, which poses risks to both countries and violates a council resolution that ended the month-long war in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah, which dominates Lebanese politics.

Seventeen times bigger than Lebanon and four times more populous, Syria has long had powerful allies here, including the Iran-backed militant Hezbollah group that now dominates the government. For much of the past 30 years, Lebanese have lived under Syrian military and political domination.

That grip began to slip in 2005, when former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated in Beirut. Widely accused of involvement— something it has always denied — Syria was forced to withdraw its troops. But the killings of anti-Syrian figures continued and opponents of Assad's regime say he has maintained his influence through allies who now control the government.

All this made the Aug. 9 arrest of former Information Minister Michel Samaha all the more shocking. Samaha, one of Syria's most loyal allies in Lebanon who has long acted as an unofficial media adviser to Assad, was plucked from his bed at dawn by special police forces who burst into his summer mountain home. Within hours, various leaks began emerging that Samaha had confessed to having personally transported explosives in his car from Syria to Lebanon with the purpose of killing Lebanese personalities at the behest of Syria.

Two days later, a military court indicted Samaha, along with Syrian Brig. Gen. Ali Mamlouk, of plotting to carry out terrorist attacks inside Lebanon. Mamlouk, who was appointed last month by Assad to head Syria's National Security Bureau, was indicted in absentia on charges he furnished the explosives to Samaha.

According to a senior Lebanese police official, Samaha confessed after he was confronted with audio and video footage taken by a double agent using a camera-equipped pen. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government regulations.

The case stunned many in Lebanon, where political assassinations have occurred with impunity for decades. While Syria has been blamed for many of the killings, no one has been held accountable. Syria's allies in Lebanon — including Hezbollah — were mostly silent following Samaha's arrest, apparently believing that the evidence against him was solid.

"I think the policy (in Lebanon) has been shifting away from alliance with Syria," said Ayham Kamel, a Middle East analyst at the Eurasia Group in London. "The Syrian regime has been under intense pressure, so its allies in Lebanon have recalibrated."

Syria's opponents in Lebanon cited the Samaha case as proof that Damascus was trying to incite sectarian strife in its neighbor to deflect attention from its own problems, and they called for the Syrian ambassador to be expelled.

In unusually bold comments by a Lebanese head of state, President Michel Suleiman said he expected Assad to explain the situation. "When any relationship with a foreign entity harms Lebanon, we end it. And when the relationship is again in Lebanon's interest, we reinstate it," Suleiman said in an apparent reference to Syria. His comments were published in the Lebanese media.

Analysts say Suleiman is aiming to be the new face of a more independent Lebanon, taking advantage of a weakened regime in Syria. Prime Minister Najib Mikati, who heads a government dominated by Hezbollah and pro-Syrian groups, said he isn't taking sides in the Syria crisis, adopting a policy of "disassociation." Critics say that has led to a general government paralysis in which authorities are afraid to take sides when it comes to Lebanon's feuding pro- and anti-Syrian camps.

Mikati commended the security operation that resulted in Samaha's arrest, saying it saved Lebanon from "major disaster." "The Syrian regime's allies are shrinking. The Lebanese government, which was 'Made in Syria,' was among the regime's last allies, and they seem to be losing even that," said Hadi Hobeish, an anti-Syrian lawmaker.

Syria accuses Sunni groups in Lebanon of trying to establish a supply line to Syrian rebels across Lebanon's northern frontier, bringing across fighters and weapons. The Lebanese military has been deployed along the porous border area to try to prevent the smuggling efforts, but if Beirut turns against Damascus, such operations could become easier to carry out.

Even Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group backed by Iran and Syria, has sought to distance itself from the turmoil in Syria. When Shiite clans abducted scores of Syrians in Lebanon last week in retaliation for a kidnapping by Syrian rebels in Damascus, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said the mayhem was out of the group's control.

Analysts say Assad still has the tools and the allies he needs to stir up trouble in Lebanon. "I don't think the Syrian regime has fully lost influence in Lebanon," said Kamel, the Eurasia analyst. "But definitely it has less ability and even willingness to intervene on the same level in Lebanese politics," he added.

Hanin Ghaddar, managing editor of the Lebanon opposition website NOWLebanon, said Lebanon is at a significant crossroads in its relationship with Syria. "Assad's aura in Lebanon is fading," Ghaddar wrote last week.

Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer contributed to this report from the U.N. in New York.

Lebanon to hold conference to encourage investment in Libya

Sep 21, 2011

Beirut - Lebanon said Wednesday it would host a conference in November to encourage investment in Libya, news reports said.

The meeting would 'promote investments in Libya and to stress the importance of joint cooperation to build a better future,' Lebanese President Suleiman said.

'In the short term, (Libyans) expect us to continue protecting civilians, helping them maintain security and facilitating the transfer of humanitarian aid,' he said.

In 2003, Libyan leader Moamer Gaddafi cut off diplomatic relations with Lebanon over the disappearance of a Lebanese Shiite cleric 25 years ago in Tripoli.

Lebanese officials believe that Musa al-Sadr disappeared in Libya after an argument with Gaddafi. Libya insists that al-Sadr and his two aides left on a flight to Rome at the end of their August 1978 visit, but Italy denies that he arrived.

Suleiman arrived in New York Tuesday to attend the annual session of the UN General Assembly. Lebanon holds the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council until the end of the month.
The council last week deployed a UN mission to support Libya's transitional authorities and unfroze assets to fund reconstruction and development.

Source: Monsters and Critics.
Link: http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/news/article_1664164.php/Lebanon-to-hold-conference-to-encourage-investment-in-Libya.

Lebanon hosts Conf on cluster bombs

Tue Sep 13, 2011

The delegates from more than 100 countries are participating in a five-day conference on cluster munitions with aim to eradicate the inhuman weapon.

Organizers have said that hundreds of thousands of unexploded cluster bombs remain in Lebanon after being dropped by Israel during the July 2006 war, The Daily Star reported on Tuesday.

“These bombs have until today disabled or killed more than 400 victims, therefore constituting a form of occupation [of the country],” Lebanese President Michel Sleiman said on Monday in his inaugural address in Beirut.

The conference will last through Friday.

Sleiman added, these weapons “still threaten our citizens' lives on a daily basis while we have not yet completely removed them and obliterated their impact.”

More than 200,000 unexploded cluster bombs have been found and made harmless since 2006, but millions still remain unfound in southern Lebanon.

The president said the primary reason the conference is being held in Lebanon because the country has suffered severely because of this inhuman weapon.

The UN investigations in southern Lebanon show that Israel dropped over four million cluster munitions during the last days of Tel Aviv's war on the country in 2006.

Sleiman went on to say that the legacy of the Israeli war machine throughout its aggression against Lebanon, especially during the month of July 2006, has caused huge devastation, claimed hundreds of innocent lives, and inflicted physical and moral suffering upon the Lebanese people.

An international convention on cluster munitions has been in force for over a year that requires signatories to give up the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of the weapons.

All the countries, which are participating in the Lebanon conference, have joined the convention.

The United States, Israel and Russia manufacture and stockpile most of the world's cluster munitions. They are among countries who have not signed the treaty.

International researchers say the US has transferred hundreds of thousands of cluster munitions, containing tens of millions of bomblets, to 28 countries in the world.

The worst affected countries are Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.com/detail/198994.html.

Activists unite in Lebanon against killer cluster bombs

2011-09-12

BEIRUT - Hundreds of activists and officials from across the globe gather in Beirut Monday with one aim in mind -- to rid the planet of cluster munitions which have killed or maimed tens of thousands of people worldwide.

The conference, which runs through Friday, joins representatives of 80 of the 100 or so countries that have signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions, an international treaty which calls for the eradication of the deadly weapons.

"This meeting will serve to put the focus on the importance of states urgently implementing all aspects of this treaty," said Steve Goose, chairman of the Cluster Munition Coalition which plays a major role in demining around the world.

"This includes stockpile destruction, victim assistance and the clearance of contaminated land around the world," Goose said.

"We already have eight (member) states who completely destroyed their stockpiles and we have many others that are already far along, even though the treaty is less than two years old."

The Cluster Munition Coalition, which groups more than 350 non-governmental organizations, estimates that 28 countries are still affected by cluster munitions -- bombs that split open before impact and scatter multiple submunitions, often hundreds, the size of tennis balls.

Many cluster bombs fail to explode immediately, lie hidden for years and kill and maim civilians, often unsuspecting children who mistake the weapons for toys, for years after the original conflict is over -- such as in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

More than 100 countries, including Lebanon, have signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which entered into force on August 1, 2010. The first meeting of states parties to the convention was held in November 2010 in Laos.

The convention requires signatories to stop the use, production and transfer of the weapons.

China, Israel, Russia and the United States have not signed the treaty. They are thought to hoard and manufacture the bulk of the munitions, although the data is secret.

The United Nations estimates Israel dropped four million bomblets over southern Lebanon in the final days of its deadly 2006 war with Hezbollah.

More than 50 people have been killed and 350 injured by cluster bomb explosions in southern Lebanon since then.

The Lebanese army says 67 percent of the affected lands have been cleared but 75 million dollars are still needed to render the country free of cluster bombs.

Source: Middle East Online.
Link: http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=48019.