Violent sectarian spillover from the Syrian conflict reached across southern Lebanon today, with armed clashes by rival groups of Sunni and Shia militia members in the Mediterranean port of Sidon that left at least two people dead and forced the Lebanese army to seal off the area.
It was one of the most serious outbreaks of violence in Sidon, a mostly Sunni city whose population largely sympathises with the Sunni-led insurgency in Syria and has grown increasingly angry with members and sympathisers of Hizbullah, the Lebanese Shia militant organisation that is fighting on the Syrian government's side.
The Sidon tensions underscored the fragility of Lebanon’s patchwork of sects, which has further weakened because of the conflict in Syria and has raised the risk of destabilising the country and the broader Middle East.
The tensions accelerated markedly this month after Hizbullah fighters entered Syria in large numbers and helped the government of president Bashar Assad rout Sunni rebels from an important border city, Qusayr, which the insurgency had used for supplies and co-ordination.
The Qusayr defeat is considered a potential turning point in the 27-month-old Syria conflict and has emboldened Assad’s forces to attack other rebel-held areas.
Lebanese news agencies said the Sidon clash had pitted fighters loyal to a militant Sunni cleric, Sheik Ahmad al-Assir, who has called for holy war against Assad, against armed members of Hizbullah occupying buildings in the Abra district of Sidon, which al-Assir's loyalists have historically controlled.
The sheik accused the Hizbullah fighters of provoking the Sidon fight by attacking a water truck belonging to his brother, and the anger escalated from there.
Automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades were fired in the clashes, which appeared to be the most serious in Sidon in months. “We will not remain silent over this criminal act,” the sheik was quoted as saying by Lebanon’s National News Agency.
A Sidon politician, Bahiya Hariri, exhorted the authorities in Beirut to deploy the army and security forces to restore stability in the city. The news agency later reported, "Lebanese Army units are currently deploying in Abra and its vicinity in eastern Sidon to curb armed manifestations."
The website of Beirut's Daily Star newspaper quoted security sources as saying at least two people were killed in Sidon. In another sign of the Syrian conflict's ravaging effects, the medical relief group Doctors Without Borders reported that a measles epidemic was sweeping through the country's rebel-held north, a consequences of the collapse of the public health system.
It reported at least 7,000 cases of measles, a malady that poses great risks to children and that in other circumstances could have been easily avoided.
“Carrying out a vaccination campaign in a polarized conflict such as this one is proving extremely difficult,” the emergency manager of the group, Teresa Sancrist?val, said in a news release.
It said many people had avoided assembling for vaccinations “for fear they might attract airstrikes or rocket attacks.”