BEIRUT (Dispatches) – Lebanon’s Shia Amal movement said on Monday last week’s street violence in Beirut in which seven Shia Muslims were shot dead aimed to reignite internal strife and threaten peace.
On Thursday, at least seven people were killed and 60 others injured after gunmen attacked Hezbollah and Amal supporters as they passed through Beirut’s Teyouneh traffic circle dividing Christian and Shia Muslim neighborhoods.
The demonstrators had taken to the streets of Lebanese capital to protest against the politicization of a judicial investigation into the 2020 port blast that devastated swathes of Beirut and left over 200 people dead.
“What happened showed the Lebanese people the truth behind what these groups are doing in terms of trying to ignite internal strife and national division and threaten civic peace and pushing the Lebanese back to the era of civil wars,” Amal said in a statement.
The incident marked the worst street violence in over a decade.
Amal, which is led by Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri, one of the most powerful political figures in the country, urged the authorities to arrest all those responsible.
Hezbollah blamed the Christian Lebanese Forces (LF) party for the deaths, an accusation that LF head Samir Geagea denied.
Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Derian, Lebanon’s leading Sunni cleric, condemned the attacks and described them as shameful.
“Difference of opinion is granted but fighting in the streets is not acceptable,” he said in comments carried by the state National News Agency. “The solution is through peaceful means not through the use of weapons that are spread in the street.”
A senior Lebanese journalist has identified a U.S. embassy employee as one of the snipers who opened fire at supporters of Hezbollah and Amal movements.
In a post on his twitter account, Hosein Mortada released a photo of Shukri Abu Saab, a member of the Lebanese security forces and a U.S. embassy employee, and said he had been one of the snipers involved in the recent deaths in Beirut.
Speaking at the funeral of victims of Thursday’s shootings, senior Hezbollah member Hashem Safieddine said what happened in Beirut “was part of measures managed by the U.S. embassy in Lebanon and funded by some Arab parties.”
A top-level meeting at Lebanon’s interior ministry concluded that the far-right LF political party started the bloodshed.