Exclusive:
Lebanese army chief defies government as Syria steps
in to back Hizballah's conquest of Beirut districtsMay 9, 2008, 1:49 PM (GMT+02:00)
At least 11 people were killed Friday, May 9, Day 3 of fierce clashes between Hizballah and pro-government forces, the worst since the 1975-90 civil war. At noon,
Syrian Social Nationalist Party?s units entered Beirut to support
Hizballah's advancing occupation of Sunni West Beirut districts.
DEBKAfile's Middle East sources report that Thursday night, army chief Gen. Michel Suleiman refused to obey prime minister Fouad Siniora's order to declare a state of emergency for the crisis created by Hizballah's declaration of war against the government. The general warned that if the government enacted an emergency, he would order the troops to return to barracks.
The SSNP is a Greek Orthodox arm of Syrian military intelligence.
Hizballah and fellow Shiite Amal fighters were thus able to seize control of most of pr-government Sunni West Beirut in clashes that have spread to other parts of the Lebanon while the government was left unprotected.
The urban warfare shut down Lebanon's port and all but closed the international airport, with burning barricades on major highways in Beirut.
The army has only interfered in extreme situations. Friday, soldiers rescued the
anti-Syrian majority leader Saad Hariri and allied Druze leader Walid Jumblatt when their mansions were surrounded and attacked by Shiite forces, but they did not make the assailants move out. The Lebanese army, half of whose members are Shiites, thus permitted Hizballah and Amal clinch their control of the Sunni neighborhoods.
The Lebanese army also took over the pro-government Future TV station and newspaper owned by Hariri after they were blown up. The army agreed to keep the station off the air.
DEBKAfile's military sources report that the United States, France and Israel are watching passively as Lebanon falls to Iran's surrogate terrorist group Hizballah. Since the 2006 Lebanon war, prime minister Ehud Olmert has insisted improbably that the conflict had left Hizballah seriously weakened.
Hizballah's leader Hassan Nasrallah warned Thursday night that the only way to stop the violence was for the "black gang" ruling the government to withdraw its decisions to close his military telecommunications network and restore Hizballah loyalists to key positions at Beirut international airport.
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