Associated Press
BEIRUT, Lebanon: Cleaners swept smoldering car tires and bulldozers removed debris and other obstacles from major highways as a tense calm shrouded Lebanon Wednesday, a day after violence between government supporters and opponents killed three and injured more than 170.
As the country took toll of the worst escalation of the Hezbollah-led opposition s campaign to topple Prime Minister Fouad Seniora s Western-backed Cabinet, the premier flew to France to attend an international donors conference. Many schools, banks and shops that had closed Tuesday during the strike reopened Wednesday after the opposition suspended the walkout.
The road to the airport, closed by burning tires and earthen barricades that Hezbollah supporters set up, was reopened by the Lebanese army shortly after midnight Tuesday. International flights resumed Wednesday morning, enabling the several hundred passengers stranded in the terminal to head to their destinations.
But a tense atmosphere hung in the air even people went about their daily activities.
Commuters enjoyed lighter traffic than usual as the drove by still-smoldering tires that street cleaners had pushed to the roadside. The roads from Beirut s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, were reopened to traffic Wednesday but were still littered with debris, rocks, traces of burned tires and sand barricades.
Police, in a final toll of the trouble, reported that three people were killed and 173 injured. Of the 173, 48 sustained gunshot wounds and the rest resulted from blows from sticks or stones. Most of the lightly injured were treated on the spot or at emergency rooms and released.
Tuesday s disturbance began after the Hezbollah-led opposition and labor unions called for a general strike that was rejected by the government, its political supporters and business leaders.
Opposition supporters took to the streets, to enforce the strike by putting up barricades, mostly of burning car tires. Troops intervened and government supporters trying to reopen roads clashed with the opposition in some areas.
The action paralyzed Beirut and areas across Lebanon before they suspended the strike, saying it served as a warning to the government. The opposition, however, promised more action later if their demands were not met.
Seniora left early Wednesday for France to attend an international donors conference aimed at raising billions of dollars in aid for rebuilding the devastation caused by last summer s Israel-Hezbollah war.
Fighting Tuesday quickly took on a dangerous sectarian tone in a country whose divided communities fought a bloody 1975-90 civil war. Gunmen from neighboring districts in the northern city of Tripoli – one largely Sunni Muslim, the other largely Alawites, a Shiite Muslim offshoot – fought each other, causing two of the fatalities.
The day gave a frightening glimpse of how quickly the confrontation between Seniora s government and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah and its allies could spiral out of control, enflame tensions among Sunnis, Shiites and Christians and throw Lebanon into deeper turmoil.
