Child Dies, Troops Injured in Tripoli Clashes
Clashes between the Lebanese army and gunmen left a child dead and several injured on Tuesday as roads in and around the northern city of Tripoli remained blocked, the state-run National News Agency reported.
The fighting renewed on Tuesday morning after a cautious calm following a night of gunbattles between the army and masked men.
A 12-year-old girl died after she was shot in the head, and several people were injured from sniper fire, NNA said.
Seven soldiers, were also wounded, one of them seriously, when their bus came under fire on the road that links Tripoli with the northern district of Akkar, the army announced.
The military communique said army units were searching for the attackers to arrest them.
The roads, which lead to the impoverished neighborhood of Bab al-Tabbaneh and mainly the highway that links Tripoli with Akkar, remained closed.
The clashes between the masked fighters and the army erupted after news broke about the injury of Muslim scholars in the northeastern border town of Arsal where the military is locked in gunbattles with terrorists, it added.
Media reports said that Sheikhs Salim al-Rafehi, Nabil al-Halabi and Jalal Kalash from the Muslim Scholars Committee were wounded late Monday after coming under fire.
They were in Arsal to negotiate a ceasefire.
Tripoli had been relatively calm since the army and security forces implemented a plan in April to restore law and order.
The city had in the past witnessed several rounds of deadly fighting between Bab al-Tabbaneh, whose residents are Sunnis, and Jabal Mohsen, a mainly Alawite neighborhood that backs Syrian President Bashar Assad.
G.K.
H.K.
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