...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers..., first responders say, as fighting rages for a fifth day.
Violence broke out late Thursday in the Ain al-Helweh camp on the outskirts of the coastal city of Sidon, just weeks after similar festivities pitted members of Paleostinian Authority President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas
...aka Abu Mazen, a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial. While no Yasser Arafat, he has his own brand of evil, just a little more lowercase....
’s Fatah movement against Islamist bad boys.
The toll has risen to at least "six dead, one of them killed on Monday, and more than 60 maimed," says Imad Hallak from the Paleostinian Red Islamic Thingy’s Lebanon branch. The casualties include both fighters and civilians, he adds.
An AFP correspondent in Sidon reports ongoing festivities with automatic gunfire and shelling, after fighting had subsided somewhat overnight.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) says the city’s southern entrance is closed to traffic. The NNA had reported Saturday that three fighters and one civilian had been killed.