Civilians pay the price in Abra

 Although much has been reported of the loss of life during the recent fighting between Sunni fighters ant the Lebanese army in Saida (read more about it here), thanks to Hisham, the guy pictured below, I was able to visit the homes of some Abra residents who had been caught in the crossfire.
See the video below to get a good idea of how some of the damage was caused. The guys in the video are firing from the hillside shown in the last picture posted.

The show goes on in Tripoli

Two neighbourhoods in Lebanon's northern city of Tripoli have been at war with one another since the early 80's. Every so often the violence will kick off, a few people get shot by snipers and homes get destroyed by RPGs. These days, the conflict is being chucked in with the war currently going on across the border, as the two sides mirror the Sunny vs Alawite conflict currently wracking Syria. I'm not sure if either side have even tried to take so much of an inch of ground in this feud, which has been running longer than I've been alive, or whether they ever will. The last bout – which kicked off at the tail end of last week – was particularly nasty, with over 100 wounded and 17 totally pointless deaths so far. Read more by the talented Mitchell Prothero in the Observer, who picked up one of my pics from AFP. Also check out this account by Josh Wood here.

Tires of fire

It's been a busy day in Beirut, with a handful of hardcore Sunni supporters protesting against the selection of Najib Mikati as Lebanon's premier, after Saad Hariri's government collapsed earlier in the month.

Most of the protesting took place in the Northen city of Tripoli but some hundred (at most) demonstrators blocked off the Cola intersection for a good portion of the day, as well as other skirmishes around the city.  No doubt the world's press will tell us the whole country is a ablaze, but for now, in Beirut at least, the busses are still running and everything is pretty much normal - bar the obvious.