Precarious calm holds in Tripoli after clashes

A tenuous calm held in Tripoli Sunday, but tensions were running high after violence between rival groups over the weekend left 14 wounded and the Lebanese Army struggling to maintain control. Clashes first broke out Friday evening between a group of people from the Tripoli neighborhoods of Jabal Mohsen and Baqqar when a personal dispute degenerated into armed fighting. Units of the Lebanese Army posted to the area responded to the scene, but soon after order was restored, violence broke out in other parts of the city. Fighting in the neighborhoods of Zahrieh and Refaieh erupted at around midnight and culminated with members of a Salafist group surrounding the headquarters of an organization allied with Hezbollah. The Army deployed to the area to separate the fighters and cordoned off the headquarters in Zahrieh. Meanwhile, passengers in cars driving through the city streets began firing weapons in the air, behavior that also preceded three days of deadly clashes in Tripoli in May. That violence, between the rival neighborhoods of Jabal Mohsen, which is predominantly Alawite, and Bab al-Tabbaneh, whose residents are mostly Sunni, left 11 dead. The weekend violence comes one week after a dispute between the Aswad and Khalaf families in Bab al-Tabbaneh left two members of the Khalaf family dead. A number of Aswad family members have fled the neighborhood, including Mahmoud Aswad, who is said to be close to Hezbollah and has not returned to Bab al-Tabbaneh. The renewed fighting also comes amid reports that some Salafist groups are calling for expelling all Hezbollah allies from the city, a potentially dangerous development that could spread the conflict, which has been mostly confined to Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen, into other parts of Tripoli. The Army tightened their hold on the areas that saw clashes over the weekend. Army vehicles began patrolling the streets to restore calm, but tensions remained very high. Abu Mansour, who leads an armed group in Bab al-Tabbaneh, said the violence in the northern city was inextricably linked to the conflict in Syria. “The security situation in Tripoli will remain extremely dangerous as long as killings in Syria continue; groups will not allow Hezbollah and the rest of Syria’s allies to tamper with the fate of Tripoli,” he said. Meanwhile, residents of Jabal Mohsen said that certain groups are trying to spark strife in the city and are using the situation in Syria as a pretext to stir up violence. Youssef Sheikh, an official from the pro-Assad Arab Democratic Party, which has strong support in the neighborhood, said: “We members of the Alawite sect are Lebanese, and we have our political convictions which put us on the side of Bashar Assad.” “The other side should understand this reality and not bet on the support of the Syrian opposition members to attack Jabal Mohsen,” he added, accusing some security forces of being involved in Tripoli’s fighting by supporting extremist groups against Jabal Mohsen. In the aftermath of the violence, Akkar MP Khaled Daher said in a news conference Saturday that Hezbollah was causing tension across the country in order to support the Syrian regime, which he warned would survive for only a few more days. Daher later attended a meeting held by Tripoli MP Mohammad Kabbara Sunday to discuss the fighting. The two were joined by Azzam Ayoubi, an official of Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiya, Future Movement official Mustafa Alloush, and religious figures from Tripoli. Speaking on behalf of the gathering, Kabbara called on authorities to dismantle the zones controlled by armed groups in the city, most of whom he said were allies of Hezbollah. He also called on residents of the city to use restraint and not react to provocations and to support state forces’ efforts to restore order. Kabbara laid the blame for the country’s difficulties on Hezbollah, which he said had hijacked decision-making from the state and its institutions. From:The daily star