A Lebanese protester was killed outside the Iranian embassy in Beirut on Sunday after gunmen from the Iranian-backed Shia Hezbollah opened fire when anti-Hezbollah Shia demonstrators approached, witnesses and officials said. The Lebanese army deployed tanks and erected roadblocks across Beirut following the shooting, fearing a flare-up in sectarian and factional hostility.
Protesters had condemned Iranian and Hezbollah backing for the Syrian president in a civil war that has been spreading across Lebanon's border. A Reuters journalist outside the Iranian embassy saw men with handguns and dressed in black with the yellow arm-bands of Hezbollah scuffle with a group who drew up in a bus. The gunmen drew their weapons and fired. Several protesters were hit. Lebanese security officials said a member of a Shia party that opposes Hezbollah was killed and several were injured. They said the protesters had not been armed.
They named the dead man as Hashem Salman of the Intima party, led by Ahmad al-Assad whose family has been politically eclipsed within the Shia community since Iran and Syria backed Hezbollah during the Lebanese civil war in the 1980s. When the bus carrying the Intima group stopped outside the embassy, Hezbollah supporters, identifiable by their yellow arm-bands and black clothing, wearing pistols on their belts, attacked the vehicle with batons, smashing its windows.
The two groups scuffled in the road and the Hezbollah men drew their weapons and opened fire. Several people appeared to be hit and fell, the Reuters journalist said. Lebanon's official news agency put the number of wounded in the incident at three.
Comments
Comments are closed.