By NAJIA HOUSSARI -- arabnews.com -- BEIRUT: The streets of Baalbek have been in chaos over the past two days because of violent clashes between the Jaafar and Shamas clans. Video footage released on social media showed dozens of armed men walking the streets to an inflammatory soundtrack. State security forces are conspicuous by their absence from the footage. The two clans are spread throughout the Baalbek-Hermel region, up to the Syrian border. Both have been the source of hundreds of Hezbollah militants over the years.

The current violence was sparked by the killing of Abbas Shamas on Sunday by four members of the Jaafar clan. Abbas was the brother of two Shamas members imprisoned for the killing of Issa Ali Jaafar in 2017. Following that murder, the two clans established a wary peace agreement to prevent further bloodshed. But following the murder on Sunday, the Jaafar clan celebrated its revenge by taking to the streets and firing missiles in the air. Governor of Baalbek Hermel Bashir Khadr told Arab News: “People were going about their normal lives. Tourists were visiting the castle and the city when the firing of automatic and missile weapons suddenly started, and this terrified people. People are already frustrated and restless as a result of the difficult economic conditions the country is going through.”

by rt.com — The massive blast that destroyed a huge swathe of Beirut in August was one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions …

by english.aawsat.com -- Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat Lebanon’s Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rai revived on Sunday debate over the demarcation of the Lebanese-Syrian border in the southern Shebaa Farms region. He made his remarks days after parliament Speaker Nabih Berri announced that a framework had been agreed upon to begin indirect US-mediated talks with Israel on land and maritime border demarcation, which will be led by the Lebanese army. "We should work to demarcate the borders with Syria in the area of Shebaa Farms to end the abnormal and ambiguous situation there," the Patriarch said during Sunday mass.

Rai welcomed the framework agreement, which will allow Lebanon to restore its international border line in the South, facilitate the extraction of its maritime wealth of oil and gas, and end the series of attacks and wars between Lebanon and Israel, according to Resolution 1701 of the Security Council, which places it on a path of peaceful negotiation instead of fighting, without this implying a process of normalization. “On this occasion, an agreement must be found to resolve the issue of the presence of about half a million Palestinian refugees in Lebanon,” Rai continued, adding that through more resilience, Lebanon is bound to overcome its ordeals.

by Sunniva Rose -- thenational.ae -- Former cycling superstar Lance Armstrong toured Beirut on Sunday with over thirty amateur cyclists to raise funds for local NGOs working to assist victims of the August 4 blast. The ruined port remains an arresting sight, with buildings blown to pieces in the explosion that killed nearly 200 people and left 30,000 more homeless, leaving piles of rubble still being cleared by expert teams “I’ve never seen anything like that,” said Mr Armstrong, as he prepared to lead the peloton from the port to the offices of the Lebanese Red Cross, and then to Lebanese NGOs Heartbeat, Beit El Baraka, and Offre Joie. “The fact that only 200 people lost their lives, that’s a miracle,” he added.

Beirut is still reeling from the effects of the explosion of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate in its port. An investigation is ongoing, but in protests and on social media, the Lebanese accuse their leaders of being responsible for the unsafe storage of the chemical for seven years. “Disaster-stricken Lebanon” was trending on Twitter on Sunday. Mr Armstrong arrived in Beirut on Friday for a four-day visit, his first to the country, and visited the blast site the next day. Mr Armstrong told The National that his friend, American-Lebanese real estate investor Thomas Barrack, convinced him to visit Lebanon. “He asked me to come, I said absolutely,” said Mr Armstrong, who is scheduled to fly to Dubai on Monday for a four-day work trip. “Tom and I are on a longer trip in this part of the world and it just came together. Originally, we weren’t coming to Lebanon.” Lebanese Red Cross volunteer Oudey Hamadeh, 26, said he hoped Mr Armstrong’s visit would encourage donations. “At the start, there were a lot of funds and we hope that the funds will come back,” he said. “It’s been two months since the explosion and maybe people have lost interest in helping the Lebanese Red Cross.”