Tensions in Taamir after Clash between ISF Intelligence Agents, Resistance Brigades
The Sidon area of Taamir Ain el-Hilweh witnessed Thursday an exchange of gunfire between a member of the Hizbullah-affiliated Resistance Brigades and agents from the Intelligence Bureau of the Internal Security Forces, which soon erupted into armed clashes and prompted the bureau to dispatch a unit from its commando Strike Force to the southern city.
“As a unit from the Intelligence Bureau raided the shop of Abbas D., his son Mohammed, who is a member of the Resistance Brigades, opened fire at them,” state-run National News Agency reported.
“The agents responded in kind and the army immediately carried out a broad deployment in the area in order to contain the clash and pursue the shooter,” NNA added.
After a brief lull, gunfire renewed in the neighborhood in the evening as the sound of a blast echoed in the area.
Al-Jadeed TV said the explosion might have resulted from a hand grenade as MTV said the sound came from “an RPG fired into the air by the Resistance Brigades during the raids that were carried out by the ISF Intelligence Bureau.”
According to NNA, bureau agents managed to arrest Resistance Brigades member Mahmoud Adnan Ahmed, “who was one of those involved in the shooting.”
Meanwhile, the Joint Palestinian Force at the Ain el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp “took strict security measures to prevent the entry of any fugitive fleeing the security forces,” the agency reported.
The decision to create the Resistance Brigades was taken in 1997 by Hizbullah's leadership. The group at the time comprised Lebanese young men who wanted to fight the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon without having to officially join Hizbullah.
However, the Brigades were not dissolved after the Israeli army withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000 and they reportedly took part in the fighting against Islamist cleric Ahmed al-Asir's group in the Sidon suburb of Abra in 2013.
On December 3, Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq announced that the security plan that got underway months ago will also be implemented against the members of the Hizbullah-linked group, which he described as a group of “sedition, divisions and conflict.”
Y.R.
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