BEIRUT (AFP) - Twenty people were injured in street clashes between rival political factions in Beirut, which saw shops and cars set ablaze as rioters fought each other with stones and clubs. "Eighteen people were wounded by stones and baton blows and two others were lightly wounded from shots fired during the clashes," a senior security official told AFP on Sunday. Soldiers and police were out on patrol on Sunday in the Ras al-Nabah district where the fighting took place but the situation was calm.

The army issued a statement calling on all Lebanese not to take part in such gatherings which "each time end in arrests being made," but it did not say how many people were detained on Saturday. Similar clashes in recent days between supporters of the Western-backed government and the Shiite-led opposition have raised tensions in a country already embroiled in its worst political crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war. The security official had said the fighting involved supporters of ruling majority leader Saad Hariri and rivals in the opposition Shiite movement Amal, whose leader is parliament speaker Nabih Berri.

 (Middle East Times, with agency dispatches) By SANA ABDALLAH , Rival political leaders and tens of thousands of their supporters ignored heavy rains in Beirut Thursday to mark two assassinations with fiery speeches that are expected to deepen divisions in Lebanon and sharpen bitterness with Israel.

Thousands thronged Martyrs' Square in central Beirut to commemorate the third anniversary of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's assassination in a massive explosion that marked the start of the worst crisis to besiege Lebanon since the end in 1990 of its 15-year civil war.

In the Shiite southern suburbs of Beirut, thousands of other mourners converged under umbrellas to bury Imad Mughnieh, a top Hezbollah commander who was assassinated in a car bombing in Damascus Tuesday night.  While some of the pro-Western March 14 ruling coalition leaders at Martyrs' Square lashed out at the Syrian and Iranian backers, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki were attending the funeral ceremony for Mughnieh in the southern suburbs. Accusing Israel for the assassination of Mughnieh, and by doing so taking its battle with Hezbollah outside Lebanon, Nasrallah vowed to fight back anywhere. Addressing the Israelis, he said: "O Zionists, if you want this kind of open war, then let the whole world listen: Let this be open war."  Israel has denied involvement in the car bomb that killed Mughnieh, but welcomed his assassination.  Middle East analysts had anticipated that the place of the killing and method used on Mughnieh, who had managed to operate underground for more than 20 years, would prompt Hezbollah to expand its confrontation with Israel beyond Lebanon's borders. The Shiite guerilla group was widely hailed in the Arab world for "defeating" Israel in its 34-day war on Lebanon in summer 2006, and its guerillas were credited for ending Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000.

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