Sectarian tensions look to be boiling over again in northern Lebanon today, with three people, including a pair of Lebanese soldiers, wounded in a gunbattle in front of a Tripoli hospital.
The battle, which was reportedly brief, included residents of a Sunni neighborhood and a Shi’ite neighborhood both adjoining the hospital. Both sides claimed to be acting in self-defense, and the military responded by setting up checkpoints in the area.
Members of the local Alawite party claimed that masked Salafist fighters have set up a bunch of alternative checkpoints in their neighborhoods, and that they were behind the initial shooting, as well as a shelling attack on a pharmacy in a Shi’ite neighborhood.
The sectarian fighting in Tripoli isn’t happening in a vacuum, but is rather a reflection of tensions created by the growing civil war in neighboring Syria, with Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebel fighters openly urging the city’s Sunni population to rebel.
First Syria, now someone is stirring the pot in Lebanon. Qui bono?