Game ON: Clashes Rage In Tripoli Causing Casualties And Damage
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Beirut, 22 Jun 08 – At least one person was killed and 24 people were wounded in fierce clashes that raged between the Hizbullah-led opposition and majority partisans in the northern town of Tripoli.
The fatality was identified as Ahmed Hassan al-Sayed a citizen of Tripoli’s Tabbaneh district.
Police said he was hit by a sniper bullet that penetrated his heart.
The clashes raged as of 6 a.m., two hours after unidentified assailants in the pro-opposition stronghold of Baal Mohsen hurled hand grenades at Tabbaneh, a predominantly Sunni Muslim district backing Saad Hariri’s Mustaqbal Movement.
A police source said most of the wounded were Tripoli citizens hit by sniper fire from rooftop nests in Baal Mohsen.
Mortars, Rocket-Propelled Grenade launchers and automatic rifles were used in the confrontation, police reported.
Local reporters in Tripoli told Naharnet the thuds of exploding RPGs and mortar rounds echoed across the city early in the morning accompanied by staccato bursts of machine gun fire.
Ambulances, sirens wailing, evacuated victims to Tripoli’s hospital as scores of families evacuated their apartments in Tabbaneh, the faces Baal Mohsen.
Mortar rounds and RPGs scored hits in residential apartment, setting some of them ablaze.
Sniper fire targeted Tripoli’s main streets and reached as far as the Mina suburb.
Police blocked traffic across such exposed streets in an effort to avert exposing civilians.
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