Beirut clashes kill two after killing of anti-Assad cleric

ALBIREH, Lebanon (Reuters) – Hundreds of Islamist gunmen fired in the air on Monday as they laid to rest a Sunni Muslim cleric whose killing ignited street battles that brought the bloodshed of Syria’s uprising across the border into Lebanon.

Sheikh Ahmed Abdul Wahid, an opponent of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was shot dead a day earlier at a Lebanese army checkpoint in a part of Lebanon where Sunni sentiment is with Syria’s rebels.


The clashes on Monday between gunmen from the Future Movement, loyal to anti-Syrian former Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, and members of a pro-Syrian party, left two dead and were the worst unrest in Beirut since sectarian fighting brought Lebanon to the brink of civil war in 2008.

Khaled Daher, a member of parliament from the Future Movement, said Abdul Wahid was the victim of an “intentional assassination” by Lebanese troops he said were loyal to Damascus, which demands Lebanon cut the flow of arms to the mainly Sunni rebels in Syria.

Syria flooded Lebanon with troops early in its 1975-1991 civil war and dominated its smaller neighbor for over a decade afterwards. It retains significant influence over Lebanon’s intelligence apparatus and military.

Its 14-month-old uprising has rippled into Lebanon, where fighting between Sunni Muslim fighters, Assad supporters who belong to his minority Alawite sect, and Lebanese troops killed eight people in the northern city of Tripoli last week.


Lebanon’s Prime Minister, himself from Tripoli, has appealed for calm and vowed steps to preserve civil peace. Judicial sources said 20 soldiers were being questioned over the checkpoint killing, following demands for their prosecution.


In Syria, where a ceasefire intended to pave the way for a U.N.-sponsored peace plan has failed to take hold, opposition activists said Assad’s forces extended an offensive in the central province of Hama.



The group claimed separately that two civilians had died of gunshot wounds on Monday after an exchange of fire between government troops and deserters outside the coastal city of Banias.

There was no independent confirmation of the accounts from Syria, which strictly limits journalists’ access.

Damascus says it shares the U.N. plan’s goal of a negotiated path out of bloodshed, and points to its recent constitutional change and parliamentary elections as proof of its sincerity. The opposition dismisses both as farcical.


On Monday, Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem told the U.N. peacekeeping chief that the global body should also show concern about the impact of Western sanctions on the wider Syrian population, the state news agency SANA said.
