Troops move in to quell Lebanon fighting

Army troops moved into the streets of Tripoli on Monday, restoring a precarious calm in northern Lebanon after 10 people died in heavy clashes in recent days, military officials said.

“The situation is back to normal since this afternoon, when the army entered all the neighborhoods where the fighting happened,” said a high-ranking military officer, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. “Our intervention came after a political agreement between all parties.”

The fighting between supporters of the Western-backed, Sunni-led government and a minority group allied with Hezbollah, which has links to Iran and Syria, further strained a political agreement reached in May that ended Lebanon’s worst civil violence in years.

The accord brokered by Qatar led to parliament’s election of Gen. Michel Suleiman as president, but bickering over key ministries has prevented the formation of a national unity government. Observers said that security in the country remained fragile and that Hezbollah was moving to consolidate its political victory from the Qatar talks.

The Shiite Muslim militant group, which will make up one-third of the new national unity government, is pressing to control all of the country’s security institutions.

“There won’t be at the head of any security apparatus in Lebanon, or any army position, someone who does not enjoy the trust of the resistance,” Hezbollah’s foreign relations officer, Nawaf Moussawi, said in a speech Saturday.

“Nobody will be able to appoint at any position someone whose allegiance to the nation is doubtful or who is conspiring against the resistance,” Moussawi said.

Sami Nader, a professor of international relations at Beirut’s St. Joseph University, said Hezbollah’s main challenge is to ensure “harmony” with the army.

“The core issue today for Hezbollah is the country’s security system,” Nader said. “In 2005, Hezbollah lost its once-complete harmony with the army. They now want to regain their full trust in the allegiance of the army to them.”

Some analysts believe that Hezbollah is reacting to new regional political strategies that are not in its favor. Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said Hezbollah is attempting to strengthen its influence, especially against the backdrop of negotiations between Israel and Syria.

“Hezbollah is concerned about Syrian-Israeli talks,” Salem said. “They have an interest in a normalized and stabilized country where the balance of power is in their favor. This would prevent Israel from attacking them and Syria from selling them off.”

On Monday, members of the anti-Syrian March 14 coalition blamed Hezbollah for instigating the violence in the north. Hezbollah officials countered by accusing the Western-backed parliamentary majority of providing its allies in the north with weapons.

The state-run news agency reported that the fighting erupted early Sunday after hand grenades were thrown into some areas of Tripoli loyal to Saad Hariri, the Sunni head of the parliamentary majority. The news agency said 10 people were killed in the fighting and more than 50 were injured.

The clashes reportedly involved mortars, grenades and machine guns. Witnesses said houses were burned down and that scores of families fled their homes. Local television stations showed billowing smoke and buildings pocked with bullet holes.

Although heavily influenced by the current political division in the country, the fighting also stemmed from long-standing rivalries between Sunnis from the poor Tebbaneh area of Tripoli and Alawites living on the adjacent hill of Jabal Mohsen. Lebanon’s Alawites are a minority sect belonging to a branch of Shiite Islam that has strong historical ties to the Syrian regime. Tensions have recurred between Alawites and Sunnis since Syrian troops withdrew from Lebanon in 2005.

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Times staff writer Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo contributed to this report.