Pro- and anti-Syrian groups clash in north Lebanon

[June 02, 2012]  BEIRUT (AP) -- Gunbattles between pro- and anti-Syrian groups in northern Lebanon killed at least one person and wounded nine Saturday, security officials said, as activists reported fresh shelling of a region in central Syria that witnessed a massacre last week that killed more than 100 people.

The clashes in the Lebanese port city of Tripoli started shortly before midnight Friday and continued Saturday, the officials said on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Lebanon and Syria share a complex web of political and sectarian ties and rivalries, which are easily enflamed. Clashes in Tripoli last month killed at least eight people in a spillover of the conflict in Syria. The split is between Sunni Muslims who support Syrian rebels trying to oust President Bashar Assad and members of the leader's tiny Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

In Syria, activists said government troops fired shells at Houla, a cluster of farming villages in the central province of Homs where the U.N. says at least 108 people -- including 49 children under the age of ten -- were killed on May 25.

The opposition and the government have exchanged accusations over the massacre with each side blaming the other.

Syria has come under deep international isolation since its forces launched a ferocious crackdown on dissent nearly 15 months ago, but the Houla massacre has brought a new urgency in calls to end the crisis.

In Qatar, the head of Syria's largest exile opposition group said Saturday he would welcome Arab military action aimed at ending attacks by Assad's regime against Syrian rebel forces and civilians.

Burhan Ghalioun, head of the Syrian National Council, made the comments before a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers. The envoys are to discuss the bloodshed in Syria, including the Houla massacre.

Gulf nations such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar have pledged funds to aid Syria's rebels, but there is no direct evidence that the money is reaching anti-Assad forces or that the rebels are becoming better armed. The Arab League, however, does not appear ready to deploy its own troops. Kofi Annan, the international envoy for Syria, is also in Doha.

On Friday night, state TV aired interviews with two witnesses from Houla who said the victims of the massacres were members of families that support the government and did not take part in anti-Assad protests. The witnesses names and faces were not made public for their own safety, according to the station.

The latest statements contradicted accounts of witnesses who blamed "shabiha" or the shadowy gunmen who operate on behalf of Assad's regime. The U.N. also said it had strong suspicions those pro-regime gunmen were responsible for much of the bloodshed in Houla.

In Brussels, the U.N.'s top human rights official said Saturday there should be no amnesty for crimes committed in Syria, even if potential prosecution might motivate members of the regime to cling to power at all costs.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said international leaders may be drawn to "politically expedient solutions which may involve amnesty or undertakings not to prosecute," but she insisted there cannot be amnesty for very serious crimes.

Lawyers for former Liberian President Charles Taylor, sentenced Wednesday to 50 years in prison, had argued that giving him a long sentence would send the wrong message to Assad.

Pillay spoke a day after the Human Rights Council voted overwhelmingly to condemn Syria over the slaughter in Houla.

Activists say as many as 13,000 people have died in Assad's crackdown against the anti-government uprising, which began in March 2011 amid the Arab Spring. One year after the revolt began, the U.N. put the toll at 9,000, but many hundreds more have died since.

Since the massacre occurred, activists have reported that government troops have shelled the area almost daily adding that many residents fled for fear of a new massacre.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the shelling concentrated on the village of Tal Dahab in Houla.

The Observatory and the Local Coordination Committees also reported shelling and clashes between troops and rebels in the central city of Homs, the southern province of Daraa and some suburbs of the capital Damascus.

[Associated Press; By BASSEM MROUE]

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