Hizbollah Overruns West Beirut

For the third straight day of fighting, Hizbollah has managed to shut down the government media headquaters. See these guys understand the value of propaganda. Times Online

Hezbollah fighters seized control of rival pro-Government strongholds in Beirut today as gunbattles rocked the Lebanese capital for a third day, edging the nation dangerously close to all-out civil war.

The Shia Muslim group, the most powerful armed movement in Lebanon, forced the shutdown of all media belonging to the family of Saad Hariri, the parliamentary majority leader. A rocket hit the outer perimeter of his Beirut residence.

Gunfire and the thump of exploding rocket-propelled grenades echoed across west Beirut, where the fighting was concentrated between Sunni militants loyal to the Western-backed Government and gunmen from the Shia opposition.

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Red Cross officials said that at least 10 people were killed in the street battles that erupted yesterday after Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, called a government crackdown on his Iranian-backed Shia Muslim group a declaration of war.

“West Beirut plunges into urban warfare,” reported the French-language daily L’Orient-Le Jour.

Witnesses said that several Sunni neighbourhoods in west Beirut considered bastions of Lebanon’s ruling bloc had been overrun by militants from Hezbollah and its ally Amal.

Fierce gunbattles also raged in the mixed Sunni-Shiite-Christian neighbourhood of Hamra where opposition militants also appeared to be gaining ground, AFP correspondents said.