Security Meeting at Baabda Palace Calls for Further Cooperation, Restoring Calm
A security meeting at the Baabda Palace on Wednesday ordered the competent ministries and security forces to intensify cooperation and take the necessary measures to restore calm in tensed areas across Lebanon.
President Michel Suleiman chaired a security meeting that tackled the security chaos in several areas in the country, in particular, in the northern city of Tripoli and the Bekaa.
The meeting was held in presence of Prime Minister Tammam Salam, the competent ministers and high-ranking security figures.
The attendees ordered security agencies and ministries to further enhance cooperation, take the necessary measures to restore calm in the areas witnessing tension and to maintain stability.
Later, Salam said during a parliamentary vote of confidence session that the participants decided to call on the Higher Defense Council to discuss a security plan set to restore the state's authority..
On Saturday, al-Labweh residents blocked the road leading to and from Arsal in the wake of a rocket attack on their town that left a young man dead. They said that the rockets were fired by gunmen operating in Arsal's outskirts.
The road was reopened on Sunday afternoon at the request of the family of the slain young man before it was blocked again late Sunday in the wake of a deadly suicide car blast that rocked the nearby town of al-Nabi Othman.
On Tuesday, demonstrators blocked several key roads throughout the country to protest the continued closure of the only route leading from and to the border town of Arsal.
The standoff around the eastern town is the latest in a growing spillover of the Syrian conflict into Lebanon.
Arsal is a town of 40,000 Lebanese and 52,000 Syrian refugees for whom the road is a vital lifeline.
Another 200 Syrian families have arrived in Arsal over the past few days, fleeing the fighting after Syrian troops seized Yabrud.
Meanwhile, the latest fighting broke out on Thursday after a Sunni man was killed by unknown gunmen on a motorbike in central Tripoli.
But tensions between the districts have run high for decades, only increasing with the outbreak of the conflict in Syria in March 2011, where Alawite President Bashar Assad faces a Sunni-dominated uprising.
The Bab al-Tabbaneh neighborhood backs the revolt, while residents in Jabal Mohsen support the Syrian regime.
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