Lebanese troops kill two anti-Assad leaders

Lebanese soldiers shot dead two members of an alliance against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in northern Lebanon yesterday, in the latest incident to raise fears Syria’s turmoil was spilling over the border into its neighbour. Sheikh Ahmed Abdul Wahid, a Sunni Muslim cleric, and Khaled Miraib, both members of the Lebanon-based March 14 political alliance, were shot in their car as they sped through a Lebanese army checkpoint without stopping.

Residents of the northern region of Akkar blocked off roads to protest against the deaths. The main coastal highway north of Tripoli had also been blocked by enraged residents.

Many Sunni Muslims in Lebanon’s north sympathise with Syria’s Sunni-led uprising against Mr Assad and say that the Lebanese army is taking orders from Damascus.

Lebanon’s army released a statement confirming the deaths but not giving any information on who was responsible or what led up to the shootings.

“The leadership of the army expresses deep regret for the death of the two victims ... It will immediately form an investigative committee comprised of senior officers and military police under the relevant court,” the statement said.

Some troops had recently pulled out of Akkar to prevent tensions from escalating after sporadic fighting over the past week, prompted by sectarian tensions in neighbouring Syria, a security source said.

Khaled Daher, a member of parliament from the Future Movement party, which is part of the March 14 alliance, said the two men had been assassinated.

“If shots were fired at the tyres, we would say there was a mistake. But we consider this a direct targeting from the army,” he said. “Frankly, we do not want to see the army here because it works at the service of the Syrian regime.”

Syrian government troops were garrisoned in Lebanon until 2005.

Beirut-based political commentator Rami Khouri said the recent violence in Lebanon’s northern port of Tripoli had been linked to events in Syria.

“You have tensions in the area going back years but this has been exacerbated by the situation in Syria … Syria is not the primary factor, but it is related,” he said.

Just outside Syria’s capital, Damascus, a roadside bomb exploded yesterday about 150 metres from a United Nations convoy carrying the head of a Syria ceasefire monitoring mission and a senior UN official in the town of Douma.

Major General Robert Mood and Hervé Ladsous, the UN under-secretary-general for peacekeeping operations, were in a convoy at an army checkpoint when the bomb detonated in an nearby alleyway.

There were no reports of casualties but a security source in Douma said there had been clashes earlier in the day and that gunmen wounded 29 members of the security forces.

In Damascus, opposition groups reported fighting overnight between government forces and army defectors in the district of Kfar Souseh, a hot-bed of dissent against Mr Assad’s regime.

The district is a high security area, housing the foreign ministry and several security and intelligence agencies.