BEIRUT (AFP) - A Lebanese judge turned down a request to release two of four high-ranking security officials detained for their alleged role in the murder of former premier Rafiq Hariri, a judicial source told AFP. Investigating magistrate Elias Eid turned down the request by lawyers representing former head of Lebanese military intelligence Raymond Azar and the head of President Emile Lahoud's presidential guard, Mustafa Hamdan.They were arrested in August along with former general security chief Jamil al-Sayed and ex-internal security head Ali al-Hage following recommendations made by an initial UN probe into Hariri's February killing.

SULTAN YACOUB, Lebanon (Reuters) - Three gunmen pop up behind some rocks near Lebanon's rugged border with Syria.  "Go back. This area is off limits," one bellows down the hillside, which conceals a network of tunnels used by a pro-Syrian Palestinian faction to shelter weapons and fighters.A roadside bomb made from an artillery shell and connected to a wire peeks out of a small ditch near the entrance to the base controlled by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), ready to repel any attack.

Hidden in remote valleys or perched on strategic hills, guerrilla positions run by Damascus-based Palestinian groups dot Lebanon's frontier with Syria, among the last remnants of its military and political domination of its smaller neighbor. Lebanese have long turned a blind eye to these posts, but they have been in the spotlight since a U.N. resolution last year demanded foreign troops withdraw from Lebanon and militias -- a reference to Palestinian factions and Hizbollah -- disarm.