BEIRUT: The Higher Shiite Islamic Council on Tuesday denounced the "crime" committed Sunday against demonstrators who were staging "legal and peaceful" protests in Shiyyah.
Unidentified snipers fired at protesters and army troops Sunday afternoon at the Mar Mikhael intersection in Shiyyah. At least eight people were killed and about 22 others wounded.
Sunday's protests began in the Mar Mikhael area of southern Beirut, near the site of the massacre of Palestinians that triggered Lebanon's1975-1990 Civil War.
The council, in a statement issued after an extraordinary session, said "what has been committed against some of our children is unbearable."
The council's statement added that "peaceful and legal activities ... should not be confronted with live bullets, violence and killing."
"The brutality of the sinful aggression and ... crime committed against the southern suburbs was beyond imagination," the statement said.
It warned that the "the political future hinges on the level of serious and responsible handling of the crime and the culprits."
The council is "keen on [preserving] the army's role in safeguarding security and stability and defending the homeland and advises the army command to be vigilant regarding attempts to lure it into conflicts with those who had defended and protected it," the statement said.
The statement also urged the army command to "shoulder its responsibility by speeding up the investigations aimed at detecting those who opened fire at unarmed civilians."
Vice president of the council, Sheikh Abdel-Amir Qabalan, urged the army to conduct a "quick but not hasty investigation into Sunday's riots."
"Perpetrators ought to be identified so as to ease tensions," Qabbalan said in a statement on Monday.
Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir voiced regret on Tuesday over Sunday's riots in Beirut's southern suburbs, calling on the Lebanese to stand united in order for them to rescue the country from the current crisis.
"We are very sorry to see the incidents we have witnessed in the late 1980s occur today," Sfeir told his visitors. "As if we have not learned anything [from past experiences]."
"What is happening today - from burning tires to shooting people - contradicts the nature of the Lebanese people, who are characterized by their peacefulness," Sfeir said.
"We have to protect our freedom [...] but freedom has limits which we should abide by," he added.
According to the patriarch, the country is going through a "tough" period where divisions are tearing apart the Lebanese people in general and the Maronites in particular.
"We were hoping to stay away from such divisions," Sfeir said.
"The current circumstances call on us to stand united and work hand in hand in an effort to bring the country out of the current crisis."
Sfeir stressed the need to conduct investigations into Sunday's riots in a bid to know "who is burning the country."
"Lebanon will only be saved by its people," the prelate said.
On Monday, senior Shiite cleric Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah demanded that the Lebanese Army launch an inquiry into Sunday's riots.
The Lebanese Army "must clarify as soon as possible" the events "so that matters will not escalate as a result of the state of political turmoil and public discontent," Fadlallah said in a statement. "We fear that matters might spin out of control because of the state of political and security chaos."
Sectarian tensions have been escalating in Lebanon against the dual backdrop of a domestic political crisis and regional strains between Sunnis and Shiites stemming from the internecine violence that erupted in Iraq after the US-led invasion of the country in 2003. - The Daily Star
Printable Version 
Send to a friend 
