Lebanese city drawn into Syria fight

Alawites, Sunnis take sides, battle

Lebanese soldiers out to calm violence conduct searches Wednesday at a checkpoint in Tripoli.
Lebanese soldiers out to calm violence conduct searches Wednesday at a checkpoint in Tripoli.

— Gunmen loyal to opposite sides in Syria’s civil war battled Wednesday in the streets of the Lebanese city of Tripoli. The fighting has killed six people and wounded nearly 60 since Monday, security officials said.

The Lebanese army fanned out in Tripoli in an attempt to calm the fighting, with soldiers patrolling the streets in armored personnel carriers and manning checkpoints. Authorities closed major roads because of sniper fire.

The bloodshed is a sign of just how vulnerable Leb- anon is to getting sucked into the Syrian crisis. The countries share a porous border and a complex web of political and sectarian ties that is easily inflamed.

Among 17 Lebanese men who turned up dead in Syria last week were Bilal al-Ghoul and his childhood friend, Malek Haj Deeb, both 20. Haj Deeb’s older brother, Jihad, said the two men sympathized with the rebellion against Syrian President Bashar Assad, but they were not fighters.

Jihad Haj Deeb and Bilal al-Ghoul’s older brother, Omar, said the men must have been kidnapped and handed over to Syrian authorities by a pro-Syrian Lebanese group. They said their brothers were not members of any political or Islamic group but were observant Muslims.

“My brother doesn’t know how to hold a rifle,” Haj Deeb said.

The Lebanese men killed in Syria were Sunni Muslims, like the majority of rebels trying to overthrow Assad’s regime. Assad and much of his inner circle belong to the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

The fighting in Tripoli pits the Sunni neighborhood of Bab Tabbaneh, which supports Syria’s predominantly Sunni rebels, against the adjacent Alawite neighborhood of Jabal Mohsen, which supports Assad.

The sounds of gunfire and explosions echoed near the clashing neighborhoods, and police closed roads leading to the area. Nearby cars raced to dodge sniper fire.

Lebanese soldiers parked tanks on a bridge and in a roundabout near the area and patrolled in dozens of armored vehicles, but did not enter the neighborhoods to try to stop the clashes.

Lebanese security officials said at least six people have been killed and more than 50 wounded in the Tripoli fighting since Tuesday. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to the media.

INTERACTIVE

Uprising in Syria

The fighting in Lebanon comes at a time of deep uncertainty in Syria, with rebels battling government troops near Assad’s seat of power in Damascus.

In Brussels, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reiterated concerns that “an increasingly desperate Assad regime might turn to chemical weapons” or lose control of them to militant groups.

On Monday, President Barack Obama warned Syria not to use chemical weapons against its own people, vowing to hold accountable anyone who did, even as U.S. intelligence officials picked up signs that such arms might be deployed in the fighting there.

A senior French official said Wednesday that such signs underscored the Assad government’s weakening control over the country and its increasing desperation.

“The regime is acting more and more like a wounded wild animal,” said the official, who spoke to reporters in Washington on condition of anonymity because of diplomatic protocols. “If the regime believes it is losing control, it may try to use its maximum capacities.”

The official, who has spoken to Russian diplomats in recent weeks, said that despite Russia’s steadfast public support for the Syrian government, Russian diplomats had told him that they recognized that Assad could no longer remain in power. That assessment echoed a senior Turkish official’s assessment Monday that Russia had agreed to a new diplomatic approach that would seek ways to persuade Assad to step down. “No one in the Russian leadership believes that Assad can continue to lead Syria,” he said.

As the regime wobbles, there are fears the crisis will keep spiraling outside its borders. Fighting has spilled over into Turkey, Jordan and Israel since the uprising began more than 20 months ago, but Lebanon is particularly susceptible.

Syria’s state-run news agency, SANA, reported that 17 Lebanese “gunmen” were killed inside Syria last week, and on Sunday, Syrian TV aired footage of the dead.

Bassam al-Dada, a political adviser for the rebel Free Syrian Army, said the group believes the Lebanese men were the victims of a “complicated Syrian intelligence operation” aimed at showing that foreign fighters are involved in Syria’s unrest.

The Syrian uprising began with peaceful protests in March 2011 and later escalated into a civil war that the opposition says has killed more than 40,000 people.

OFFERS OF ASYLUM

The Obama administration said Wednesday that several countries in the Middle East and elsewhere have informally offered to grant asylum to Assad and his family if they leave Syria.

Administration officials also said they were continuing to encourage those close to Assad to defect and said they believed that Syrian foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi, who disappeared this week, is in London.

The State Department said it couldn’t vouch for the sincerity of the Assad asylum offers and noted that they raise serious questions of accountability for abuses committed by his government. But spokesman Mark Toner said the U.S. is convinced that Assad must leave and cannot play any role in Syria’s future.

“We do understand that some countries both in the region and elsewhere have offered to host Assad and his family should they choose to leave Syria,” Toner told reporters.

He would not name the countries. His comments came in response to a question about reports that some Latin American countries may be prepared to grant Assad asylum.

Toner added that the United States understood from a number of sources that Makdissi was in London. If Makdissi defected, Toner said it would be another sign the Assad government is “crumbling” and that members of Assad’s inner circle are realizing that the end is near.

Neither the Syrian nor the British governments have commented publicly on the matter.

Additionally, the Obama administration is preparing to designate a Syrian rebel group with alleged ties to al-Qaida as a foreign terrorist organization in a step aimed at blunting the influence of extremists within the Syrian opposition, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

The step will freeze any assets that members of Jabhat al-Nusra have in U.S. jurisdictions and bar Americans from providing the group with material support, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to preview the designation publicly.

Information for this article was contributed by Bassem Mroue, Karl Ritter, Suzan Fraser, Jamal Halaby, Matthew Lee, Ben Hubbard, Paisley Dodds and Elizabeth Kennedy of The Associated Press and by Anne Barnard, Michael R. Gordon, Neil MacFarquhar, Eric Schmitt and Christine Hauser of The New York Times.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/06/2012

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