Middle East, Lebanon | featured news

Lebanon should consider setting up transit centers to absorb the waves of refugees fleeing neighboring Syria and may have to establish formal refugee camps if the influx continues, a United Nations refugee official said.

BEIRUT — Gun battles broke out in Beirut early Monday, a day after emotional funeral ceremonies for Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan, the intelligence chief whose assassination has exposed long-running sectarian grudges and plunged Lebanon into its worst crisis in years.

Lebanon's prime minister linked the massive car bomb that tore through Beirut to the civil war in neighboring Syria on Saturday, the latest signal that the crisis is enflaming an already tense region.

One person was killed in Tripoli and many others injured, including Lebanese security force members, during protests Friday in the northern Lebanon city against a movie insulting the prophet Muhammad, according to the official Lebanese National News Agency.

Hezbollah's support for the government of Bashar Assad holds firm despite Sryia's bloody 18-month crackdown on a rebellion sparked by Arab Spring movements sweeping the region.

The death toll from fighting between Sunni Muslims and Alawites in Tripoli climbed to at least 10 overnight, medical sources said on Wednesday, in clashes that the city's residents described as some of the heaviest since Lebanon's civil war.

Syria has accepted a U.N.-sponsored peace plan, international envoy Kofi Annan said on Tuesday, as troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad raided rebel forces who have taken refuge across the border in Lebanon.

The CIA's operations in Lebanon have been badly damaged after Hezbollah identified and captured a number of U.S. spies recently, current and former U.S. officials told The Associated Press. The intelligence debacle is particularly troubling because the CIA saw it coming....

Israeli troops shot at Palestinian protesters on its frontiers with Syria, Lebanon and Gaza on Sunday, killing nine who were marking what they term "the catastrophe" of Israel's founding in 1948.

An anti-Syrian coalition defeated Hezbollah in Lebanon's parliamentary election on Sunday in a blow to Syria and Iran and a boost to the United States.