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Lebanese Fight Shifts To Mountains

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The Associated Press

Published: May 12, 2008

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanon hung between fears of all-out war and hopes of political compromise Sunday as government supporters and opponents battled in the mountains overlooking the capital.

The fighting saw the collapse of pro-government forces in the Aley region, a stronghold of anti-Syrian Druse leader Walid Jumblatt.

Beirut was quiet a day after Hezbollah gunmen left the streets, heeding an army call for the Shiite fighters to clear out. The city was the focus of four days of Sunni-Shiite clashes that culminated with Hezbollah seizing large swaths of Muslim West Beirut, demonstrating its military might in a showdown with the government.

Thirty-eight people have been killed since Wednesday, when a power struggle between the Hezbollah-led opposition and the U.S.-backed government erupted into the worst sectarian violence since Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war.

Across the country, there were fears of another slide into civil war. But some analysts saw Hezbollah's demonstration of its power as paving the way for a solution to end the political crisis.

"The opposition is in control now. These military victories have to be translated politically," said Amal Saad Ghorayeb, a political science professor who is an expert on Hezbollah.

"You can't have a civil war when there is one group that is militarily superior to the others," she said, referring to Hezbollah.

The violence was sparked when the government confronted Hezbollah by firing the chief of airport security for alleged ties to the militant group and declaring Hezbollah's private telephone network illegal. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said the decisions amounted to a declaration of war.

Heavy fighting between government supporters and opponents broke out Sunday in the central mountain town of Aytat and surrounding areas, about nine miles from Beirut. The sounds of heavy machine-gun fire and explosions rolled across the capital.

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