Lebanese troops on Monday moved into north Lebanon where two days of fierce sectarian battles killed are said to have killed 10 people, threatening to derail an accord to end the country's political crisis.
The army threatened to use force to end the fighting that erupted on Sunday in the densely populated Bab al-Tebbaneh and Jabal Mohsen districts of the port of Tripoli, Lebanon's second largest city after the capital Beirut.
At least eight people were killed and 45 wounded as fighters traded heavy machine-gun fire, mortar rounds androcket-propelled grenades, prompting residents to flee or take to underground shelters.
Without a government in place, with a President, that is not let to act as a [real] mediator, and with Sheikh Qassem explaining that Hizballh is not only a resistance, but “a vision and a methodology to follow, ” the situation does not look too good.
Who's fighting who and why?
According to a resident of Qobbeh, Khaled Tleiji, who was forced to leave his home with his family, the Sunni fighters are not members of the Future Movement but are rather a mix of Salafi fighters or Sunni fighters seeking "revenge." "People are buying weapons to use during the clashes from the money of their own pockets," he said, implying that external parties are not necessarily supplying weapons to fighters. The tension, Tleiji said, between the Alawi of Jabal Mohsen and the Sunni of Bab al-Tabbaneh has been ongoing since Syria's 29 year occupation of Lebanon, which ended in 2005. Tleiji added that up to 70 Sunni homes in Bab al-Tabbaneh had been burned and their residents forced into exile.
A high-ranking security source told NOW Lebanon that the army would not be able to make substantial progress on the ground action until a “decision on the political level is made.”
In short, it's bad. It's always been an existential battle for Hizbullah, and as long as they're around in this current form, the country has no chance of ever recovering. In the meantime, sedatives, in the form of beach going and barhopping seem to do the trick for a population tired of itself.
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