Beirut

BEIRUT -- Hezbollah-led protesters burned tires and cars and clashed with government supporters yesterday, paralyzing Beirut and other areas of Lebanon in the worst violence yet in the pro-Iranian group's campaign to topple US-backed Prime Minister Fuad Saniora. At least three people were killed and dozens injured as the two camps battled each other around street barricades with stone-throwing and in some cases gunfire. Black smoke poured into the sky over Beirut from burning roadblocks.

An explosive, eight-hour shootout in west Beirut that apparently erupted after a domestic dispute killed at least two people early Thursday, including a gunman who was firing machine guns and lobbing grenades from his balcony. An officer and four soldiers were wounded in the gunbattle, which began Wednesday night in the residential Caracas neighborhood, the army said in statement. Lebanese troops stormed an apartment around 6 a.m., killing one gunman and wounding another, an Associated Press reporter at the scene said.

BEIRUT -- Hundreds of Hezbollah supporters from across southern Lebanon began marching toward Beirut yesterday for a rally to showcase the group's insistence that it won't disarm. The defiant stance comes as UN peacekeepers and Lebanese troops fan out to shore up the cease-fire between the militant group and Israel, and it is a worrying signal for the weak central government. Today's rally in the bombed-out southern suburbs of Beirut could attract hundreds of thousands, Hezbollah said.

Gunmen fired rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns early Monday in intense street battles in the Lebanese capital, wounding six people as fears mounted that the conflict in neighboring Syria was bleeding across the border. The fighting appeared to be among the worst clashes in Beirut since 2008. The clashes erupted hours after an anti-Syrian cleric and his bodyguard were shot dead in northern Lebanon. Lebanon and Syria share a complex web of political and sectarian ties and rivalries, which are easily enflamed.

BEIRUT -- Syrian intelligence agents ended their 18-year presence in Beirut yesterday, and emboldened residents of the capital came forward to celebrate. Some kissed the ground and others wept, wandering the basement cellblock at the headquarters and describing torture there. Joumana Tabbara, a woman who lives across the street, waved from her balcony as she watched the agents pack up and go. After they left, she went to the basement jail, holding a picture of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister and icon of the anti-Syrian opposition who was killed in a bombing last month.

BEIRUT -- US Marines ferried 1,200 Americans from a Beirut beach to the USS Nashville yesterday -- the first Marine operation in Lebanon in more than two decades. A chartered cruise ship made its second voyage to Cyprus, carrying 1,000 more Americans, and helicopters flew some people directly to the Mediterranean island, speeding the departure of US citizens and other foreigners from Lebanon in the face of Israeli bombardment. "We didn't expect to have to leave like this," said Hasan Zaydon, a 13-year-old American who had hoped to spend the summer with relatives in the...

BEIRUT - A bomb hidden on a Beirut highway hit a US Embassy vehicle yesterday, killing at least three Lebanese bystanders in the first attack in years targeting American diplomatic interests in the country. The car's Lebanese driver and an American at a nearby school were among five people injured. The blast, just before a farewell reception for the US ambassador in downtown Beirut, came amid accelerating political tensions in Lebanon, with the US-backed government and Syrian-backed opposition deadlocked over choosing a new president.

BEIRUT -- Twenty years ago in April, a car bomb leveled the US Embassy here; six months later a truckload of explosives was detonated at a US Marine barracks, killing 241 servicemen. The reverberations of those suicide attacks in 1983 are still being felt. Today the 19-year-old soldier on duty at Beirut airport's Parking Lot C shrugs indifferently when told that this was where the doomed barracks stood. He wasn't even born when the bomb went off on Oct. 23, 1983. For many like him, it's a distant memory, one of scores of atrocities committed...

BEIRUT -- With Lebanese politicians deadlocked over the formation of a new government as Syria withdraws its forces, a car bomb rocked a largely Christian neighborhood in north Beirut early today, injuring nine people and causing extensive damage. The target of the attack wasn't immediately clear, but it added to the political turmoil after the Feb. 14 assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri, and the subsequent withdrawal of Syrian troops to east Lebanon and Syria. Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese have been participating in demonstrations for and against Syria since...

An explosive, eight-hour shootout in west Beirut that apparently erupted after a domestic dispute killed at least two people early Thursday, including a gunman who was firing machine guns and lobbing grenades from his balcony. An officer and four soldiers were wounded in the gunbattle, which began Wednesday night in the residential Caracas neighborhood, the army said in statement. Lebanese troops stormed an apartment around 6 a.m., killing one gunman and wounding another, an Associated Press reporter at the scene said.

Zahi Zeidan vows he won't back down as he stands in his bomb-shattered restaurant and oversees workers carrying debris out of dining rooms where on a good night patrons are usually drinking and dancing. "They targeted us because we serve alcohol," said Zeidan. "Selling alcohol is my right. This is my country and I will not accept that people dictate to me what I work. " Zeidan's restaurant Nocean was hit last week by a bomb blast after closing time, lightly hurting five staffers and wrecking part of the hall.

BEIRUT - Joseph Panossian, a longtime Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press who covered transformative events from the Lebanese civil war to the US invasion of Iraq, has died, his family said Wednesday. He was 74. Mr. Panossian, who was undergoing chemotherapy for lung cancer, died March 13 in Armenia, where he had been living for the past three years, said his wife, Annie. He was described by colleagues as always ready with a joke to defuse stressful and often dangerous news events.

BEIRUT - Life has become increasingly unbearable in Homs, a city under bombardment by the Syrian government, with residents recounting days of deprivation, rockets and tank shells exploding around them and having to bribe government soldiers to escape during lulls in the fighting. A young woman who fled the city, Syria's third-largest, for Beirut spoke yesterday of the hellish experience she and others had endured, trapped in their dwellings without heat while desperately awaiting breaks in the military offensive to forage for food or try to escape.

BEIRUT - Using bulldozers and their bare hands, Lebanese workers pulled bodies from the rubble of a collapsed five-story residential building yesterday, bringing the death toll to 25, officials said. Most of the dead were foreign workers living in Lebanon. The owner of the building was arrested yesterday, a day after the building suddenly disintegrated into a pile of twisted metal and broken concrete. "The ground shook like an earthquake; that's what we all thought," said Mazen Farhat, 46, who lives in the area and was passing by when the building...

Enough time has passed since the one-two punch of Beirut's widely adored 2006 and 2007 full-lengths that the long-brewing follow-up elicits a fair amount of nostalgia on first listen. But it subsides quickly in favor of appreciation for the way frontman and musical wunderkind Zach Condon has refined and retooled the folky, Old World leanings that earned him a reputation five years ago. "The Rip Tide," which was released digitally last week in advance of the album's physical release on Aug. 30, still makes use of things Condon learned on his European travels.

BEIRUT — Tens of thousands of supporters of Lebanon’s pro-Western opposition thronged downtown Beirut yesterday, demanding that the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah give up its weapons. The rally was a potent show of support for Lebanon’s toppled prime minister, Saad Hariri, who moved into the opposition after Hezbollah and its allies withdrew from his government in January, forcing him out of power. “We want to place the weapons at the disposal of the state, because it is the state that unites us all and it is the army that protects us...

BEIRUT -- A powerful bomb exploded in a Christian neighborhood of eastern Beirut late yesterday, killing at least one person and wounding seven in the latest in a series of blasts in the capital, officials said. The bomb detonated just before midnight between two parked cars, Major General Ashraf Rifi, commander of the Internal Security Forces, told The Associated Press. He added that a timing device was used but gave no further details. Rifi said one person was killed and seven were wounded and rushed to nearby hospitals.

BEIRUT-- A car bomb rocked a predominantly Christian neighborhood in northern Beirut early today, destroying part of a building and wounding at least seven people, police said. The explosion left a seven-foot-deep crater in the roadway, wrecked nearby cars, and shattered windows for several blocks in the New Jdeideh neighborhood. The target of the attack wasn't immediately clear but it came amid political turmoil in Lebanon in the wake of the Feb. 14 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and the subsequent withdrawal of Syrian troops to east...

BEIRUT — Revelers swept joyously into the streets across the Middle East yesterday after Hosni Mubarak stepped down as Egypt’s president. From Beirut to Gaza, tens of thousands handed out candy, set off fireworks, and unleashed celebratory gunfire, and the governments of Jordan, Iraq, and Sudan sent their blessings. Even in Israel, which had watched Egypt’s 18-day uprising against Mubarak with some trepidation, a former Cabinet minister said Mubarak did the right thing. “The street won. There was nothing that could be done.

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s Western-backed coalition called on supporters yesterday to hold daily sit-ins in downtown Beirut to protest the growing power of the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. The Shi’ite group and its allies toppled Lebanon’s government two weeks ago and secured enough support to name their own pick for prime minister. Hezbollah’s opponents say having an Iranian proxy at the helm would be disastrous and lead to international isolation. Fares Soeid, a senior official with the Western-backed coalition known as March...