You're reading: Second day of clashes in Lebanese city, 12 soldiers killed

Lebanese soldiers fought Sunni Muslim gunmen in the southern city of Sidon on Monday in one of the deadliest outbreaks of violence fuelled by sectarian divisions over the civil war in neighbouring Syria.

The army said 12 soldiers had been killed in clashes which
broke out on Sunday after security forces detained a follower of
the hardline Sunni Muslim cleric Sheikh Ahmed al-Assir. His
supporters retaliated by opening fire on an army checkpoint.

Security sources put the army death toll at 15, with 60
wounded. They said at least two gunmen were also killed in the
clashes but soldiers were surrounding the mosque where Assir’s
supporters were based, making it difficult to verify details.

The mosque showed signs of heavy damage from 24 hours of
ferocious exchanges of rocket and gunfire.

Sidon had been on edge since violence erupted last week
between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslim fighters, at odds over the
Syrian conflict which pits mainly Sunni rebels against President
Bashar al-Assad, an Alawite from an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.

Tensions escalated further when the Lebanese Shi’ite
militant group Hezbollah sent fighters into Syria to lead the
recapture of a strategic border town by Assad’s forces.

“The army has tried for months to keep Lebanon away from the
problems of Syria, and it ignored repeated requests for it to
clamp down on Sheikh Ahmed al-Assir’s group,” the military
command said in a statement on Sunday.

“But what has happened today has gone beyond all
expectations. The army was attacked in cold blood in an attempt
to light the fuse in Sidon, just as was done in 1975,” it said,
referring to the year that Lebanon’s own civil war began.

Assir, whose supporters accuse the army of giving cover to
Hezbollah gunmen, called for people across the country to join
him and demanded that “honourable” soldiers defect.

(