[Asharq al-Aswat] The most serious fighting in Beirut since 2008 appears to have been touched off by a traffic dispute that escalated into deadly, hours-long street battles between the Shiite Hezbollah group and a small Sunni faction, witnesses said Wednesday.
From middle fingers do hours-long gunfights grow...
Security officials said three Hezbollah members and a follower of the conservative Sunni al-Ahbash group were killed Tuesday night in the Bourj Abu Haider district, just outside Beirut's downtown, in running battles with fighters wielding assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.
That doesn't sound like an awful lot of casualties for an hours-long gun battle, certainly not one involving RPGs and assault rifles and similar weaponry...
The state news agency also said four people died, although the army put the death toll at three.
"He's dead, Jim!"
"That makes three deaders, Bones!"
[Gasp!]...[Twitch!]...[Twitch!]...[Twitch!]...[Rattle!]
"He's dead again, Jim!"
"Let's call it four to be on the safe side."
It was not clear why the fighting intensified so dramatically, but tensions among the Sunni and Shiite communities have been running high recently amid reports that Hezbollah members will be indicted in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, once the country's top Sunni politician.
"But reeeally it wudn't the Hezbullies, it wuz them Zionists! Everybody knows that!"
Abdul Qadir al-Fakhani, a front man for al-Ahbash, said his group was meeting with Hezbullies and the Lebanese army on Wednesday to ensure the situation does not flare up again.
"What's three or four dead guys among friends anyway?"
Al-Fakhani and several other witnesses said there was a commotion outside the Bourj Abu Haider mosque about 20 minutes before the gunbattles began, with men fighting over a car.
"Hey! What're you doin' on my car?"
"Your car?"
"They were shouting and yelling insults at each other," al-Fakhani told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named.
"A curse on your scraggly-ass mustache!"
"Then a group of Hezbullies approached the mosque and they just kept coming. We were astonished," he said.
"Hey, Rube!"
"Wholly spit! Hey Rube!"
Within some 20 minutes, both sides apparently gathered reinforcements and the street battles began.
"Bring forth the Holy Hand Grenade!"
Hezbullies did not comment beyond a joint statement issued by the two groups late Tuesday saying the incident resulted from a "personal dispute and has no political or sectarian background."
"But we kicked their asses!"
"Did not!"
"Did too!"
On Wednesday morning, cleaning crews were sweeping the chunks of concrete that had been blown off the mosque by bullets and grenades. At least one gunman holding an AK-47 assault rifle had taken up position in a building across from the mosque.
"Move aside, Pops!"
"Get outta here! This is an ice cream parlor, not a foxhole!"
Two other witnesses and a Lebanese soldier -- all of whom asked that their names not be used because of the sensitivity of the matter -- independently corroborated al-Fakhani's account of a traffic dispute preceding the violence. Local media also reported similar witness accounts.
"Yup. Yup. That's what happened. I seen it."
The fighting was the worst clash in Beirut since May 2008, when Hezbullies gunnies swept through Sunni neighborhoods after the pro-Western government tried to dismantle the group's telecommunications network.
That was when they took off that silly patriotic mask and announced they were in charge, with Nasrallah as Lord High Satrap...
More than 80 people were killed in the 2008 violence, pushing the country to the brink of civil war. But officials insisted Tuesday's clash was not the same sectarian strife that has bedeviled Leb for decades.
"No, no! Certainly not! This is entirely different sectarian strife!"
More than 1,500 people took part in funerals for the victims on Wednesday. In the southern quiet villageof Kfar Fila, some 1,000 people attended the burial of Hezbullies official Ali al-Jawad. Hezbullies members in black uniforms and red berets carried the coffin, wrapped in a yellow Hezbullies flag, on their shoulders.
Did they goosestep? They like to goosestep and to Hitlergrüaut;ss. It makes them feel like Master Racists.
In Beirut, several hundred turned out to mourn Ahmad Jamal Omeirat, the al-Ahbash follower. Friends at the funeral said he was just 17 years old.
[Snif!] "He was a mere tad!"
Al-Fakhani, the movement's front man, said Omeirat was a student who was killed by a gunshot to the chest.
[BANG!] "Take that, y'brat!"
[Thud!]
"He's dead, Jim!"
"How many does that make?"
"I dunno. I lost count at two."
Lebanese President Michel Suleiman condemned the fighting and urged authorities to arrest those who were behind the shooting.
Right. It could happen.
The emir of Qatar, who brokered the "Doha Agreement" that put an end to the May 2008 fighting, called Suleiman on Tuesday night to offer any assistance, the president's office said.
"Anything we can do to help?"
"You got anybody who's good at counting?"
Leb's government is an uneasy coalition of a Western-backed bloc and Hezbullies, which in just a few years has gained so much political power it now has a virtual veto over government decisions.
I said that...
Al-Ahbash, or the Association of Islamic Charitable Projects, is a deeply conservative Mohammedan group and a rival to many other Sunni groups in the country, including the prime minister's Future movement.
"Arrrr! We don't like nobody!"
"That may be why people shoot at you."
The group's name rose to prominence in the wake of the Hariri assassination. Two senior officials from the group were detained for about four years on suspicion of involvement in the killing, but were later released.
"You two! Outta my jail! Now!"
Like Hezbullies, al-Ahbash is pro-Syrian. They have feuded in the past over theological differences but were political allies whose candidates ran on the same lists during the 2009 parliamentary elections.