Soldiers and tanks have been deployed in downtown Beirut following clashes between members of Hizbullah and the al-Ahbash Islamist group that killed four people and left 10 wounded, Al-Arabiya reported Wednesday (August 25th).
Al-Ahbash is a pro-Syrian group known as the Association of Islamic Charitable Projects. Ahbash spokesman Abdul Kader Fakhani said members of his group will meet with representatives from Hizbullah and the Lebanese army to discuss the incident.
The fighting in the Bourj Abi Haidar neighbourhood on Tuesday evening involved portable rocket-propelled grenade launchers and machine guns and continued for four hours. An al-Ahbash representative said the dispute started when al-Ahbash members were attempting to park cars in front of a mosque during an iftar meal.
Hizbullah and al-Ahbash said in a joint statement that the "regrettable incident was isolated and did not have any political or confessional basis".
In a statement issued after its weekly Wednesday meeting, the March 14th General Secretariat called for efforts to control arms in Lebanon, saying that Beirut should be an arms- and militia-free city for citizens to live in peace.
Prime Minister Saad Hariri said in a statement that the state should be responsible for all security in the country.
As a country, Lebanon is a special case, because it contains many religions, doctrines and nationalities that have coexisted peacefully since ancient times. The outbreak of the civil war in Lebanon in the last century was due to the vermin foreign interventions, which have led to destabilizing security and stability in Lebanon to this day, despite the end of the civil war. What is required from the Lebanese government and its politicians who can assess different matters is to work on promoting national unity and building a strong Lebanese front which is united from the inside, by trying to cultivate the different categories of the Lebanese people with the importance of unity and togetherness for the sake of establishing a stronger and more stable Lebanon than before. They can establish this through the directed media, with the production of series and programs that strengthen this and ameliorate the role of the press, along with working on strengthening the sovereignty of the law to treat persons alike, on the principle that no one is better than the other because he belongs to this group or that sect or nation. The law, then, is the highest power in order to spread justice and fairness in Lebanon. I personally think that what disturbs Lebanese stability nowadays is the existence of militias that terrify the others with weapons and force. Here, I mean the militia of Hezbollah, led by Hassan Nasrallah. This militia had already used force against other religious sects in Lebanon, and it will not hesitate to use force once again against the others. For this reason, I think that it is better for the Lebanese government to dissolve this militia by all possible means, and to work against the ideologies adopted by the members of this militia, in order to reduce the number of its members. The government must also unveil the extent and seriousness of the danger and crimes of this militia and the threat it poses to Lebanon.
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