Street fighting pitted armed men in Beirut on Thursday (October 14th) after shots fired during a demonstration organized by the Shiite movements Hezbollah and Amal, violence that left six dead and revived the specter of civil war in Lebanon .

Their funeral is to take place on Friday, declared a day of national mourning.

The clashes took place near the Palace of Justice, where supporters of the two movements gathered to demand the replacement of Judge Tarek Bitar, in charge of the investigation into the explosion at the port of Beirut in 2020.

Calls for "de-escalation"

Abroad, France called for "appeasement" and the United States for "de-escalation", the two countries insisting on "the independence of the judiciary".

UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric called for "an end to provocative acts" and pleaded for an "impartial investigation" into the explosion at the port.

>> Deadly violence in Beirut: "Lebanon could be at the dawn of a very dark era"

After several hours of exchanges of fire with light weapons and RPG rockets which terrorized the inhabitants, calm returned at the end of the afternoon in the Tayouné sector, where the army was deployed.

She said in a terse statement that an "exchange of fire took place in the Tayouné sector when the demonstrators were on their way to protest in front of the nearby courthouse".

Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi said "snipers" fired at the demonstrators.

Quickly after the first shots, large numbers of armed men, some masked and many wearing Amal and Hezbollah armbands, rushed to the scene and started firing, according to AFP correspondents on the spot. .

But the exact circumstances of the violence remain unclear as it is not known who fired during the demonstration and who fired the Hezbollah and Amal fighters.

The two Shiite movements accused the Christian formation of the Lebanese Forces of having posted snipers but it categorically denied.

Funeral, national mourning

Terrified by the shootings, the inhabitants of the Tayouné district took refuge in their apartments and others were evacuated from the buildings.

On social media, images showed children from a school hiding under their desks or gathered on the floor in front of classrooms.

These images, as well as those of the dead and wounded, not to mention the snipers, came to recall the dark days of the civil war, which had broken out in 1975 not far from there.

Thursday's events "bring to mind the 1980s civil war in Lebanon"

06:30

For Mariam Daher, a 44-year-old mother, the idea of ​​a return to civil war is "terrifying".

"I can't relive this experience again. I want to leave and protect my children."

Bassam Mawlawi reported six deaths.

Among them, a man killed by a bullet in the head, another shot in the chest and a 24-year-old woman hit by a stray bullet in her home, according to medical sources.

The Amal movement claimed that three of its supporters perished "during the peaceful demonstration".

According to the Ministry of Health, 32 people were injured.

The funerals of the six victims are to take place this Friday, declared a day of national mourning.

In a speech, President Michel Aoun, a Christian ally of Hezbollah, judged "unacceptable to return to the language of arms because we have all agreed to turn this dark page in our history".

The army announced that it had arrested "nine people from both sides, including a Syrian", ensuring that the situation was under control.

"All his weight"

This violence occurs in an extremely tense political context: Hezbollah, a heavyweight in Lebanese politics, and its allies demand the departure of Judge Bitar who, despite strong pressure, wants to prosecute several officials as part of his investigation into the explosion at the port of Beirut on August 4, 2020 (more than 200 dead).

But politicians refuse to be questioned even though authorities have admitted that the huge amounts of ammonium nitrate that exploded had been stored at the port for years without precaution.

The protest came after the Court of Cassation dismissed complaints from deputies and ex-ministers against Tarek Bitar, allowing him to resume his investigations.

"The fact that Hezbollah is taking to the streets and throwing all its weight into this battle could lead to (...) the destabilization of the entire country," according to analyst Karim Bitar.

This violence comes on top of the multiple serious political, economic and social crises in which Lebanon is plunged, where the political class, unchanged for decades, is accused of corruption, incompetence and inertia.

With AFP

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