"The ugliest form of sectarian campaigning the region has ever witnessed," the leftist daily As Safir said Saturday of the battle in the northern district between Gen. Michel Aoun, a Maronite Catholic, and the Muslim-led coalition opposing Syrian influence, noting, among other tensions, fiery sermons from Sunni pulpits on Friday.

General Aoun, the nationalist army commander forced into exile by Syria 15 years ago, raised a stark sectarian challenge on June 12 with a stunning victory in the Maronite Catholic heartland that virtually wiped out the Christian establishment of wealthy clans and militia leaders who had joined their old Muslim civil war enemies in an anti-Syrian alliance.

His triumph came after two relatively predictable rounds, first in Beirut, where the anti-Syrian coalition led by Saad Hariri, a Sunni and son of the assassinated Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and the Druse chieftain Walid Jumblatt swept easily to victory. That was followed the next week by a similarly overwhelming victory in the south for the Shiite Muslim coalition led by Hezbollah, which is supportive of Syria.

Politics here have always been based along religious lines that are really tribal. Christians, clearly alarmed by the first two rounds, closed ranks around General Aoun.

With the last 28 seats at stake - 15 for Christians and 13 for Muslims - the election now moves to the north, around Tripoli and the mountains rising to its east. That area is believed to be slightly more than half Muslim, mostly Sunni, and slightly less than half Christian, mostly Maronite and Greek Orthodox.

As matters stand now, the Hariri-Jumblatt opposition alliance has 44 seats, General Aoun's slate has 21 and the Hezbollah alliance with its sometime Shiite rival Amal has 35.

That means to gain a bare majority in the 128-seat Parliament, the opposition alliance - which had boasted it would get 80 or 90 seats - must take 21 seats on Sunday. But if General Aoun does well, he might be able to assemble a dominant parliamentary bloc.

The voting system allows the slates to hand out ballots already filled in for their candidates, so either side could pick up a big chunk of seats.

Unless the opposition makes a strong showing, the likelihood of the ouster of President Émile Lahoud - hand-picked and given a three-year extension in office by Syria - may be slipping away. The opposition group blames Mr. Lahoud's military intelligence and security services, intertwined with those of Syria, as well as Damascus itself, for the elder Mr. Hariri's assassination.

General Aoun has allied himself with two powerful longtime supporters of Syria in the area, Suleiman Franjieh, like him a Maronite, and former Prime Minister Omar Karami, a Sunni. The general's divisive effect has been clear at his rallies where the name of Mr. Jumblatt, whose Druse militias fought Christians in the mountains, is booed. His orange flag has the Lebanese cedar tree encircled by the Greek letter omega, the scientific symbol for electrical resistance.

"For me," a supporter explained at a rally by a highway underpass in a Christian suburb before the June 12 vote, "it is resistance to Jumblatt."

Mr. Hariri, a newcomer to politics, does not have deep roots in the area, but poured his considerable resources and wealth from his family fortune in a rally in Tripoli this week, where he addressed tens of thousands of people.

His list includes members of an anti-Syrian opposition group blessed by the Maronite patriarch, Nasrullah Sfeir. Also on the list is Nayla Mouawad, who gave a passionate speech last September as one of a handful of Parliament members to defy Syrian orders to amend the Constitution giving Mr. Lahoud three more years in office. Her husband, René Mouawad, had been president of Lebanon for 17 days when a powerful bomb killed him and 10 bodyguards in his motorcade in 1989. But other members of her group in the June 12 election were defeated in General Aoun's sweep of Christian districts.

Mr. Hariri's list also includes figures from the old Christian militia known as the Lebanese Forces who could excite passions on both sides. One is Strida Geagea, a former model whose husband, Samir Geagea, is the only warlord jailed after the civil war. He is blamed for killing Mr. Karami's brother, Rashid, then prime minister, and Mr. Franjieh's father, Tony, leader of the family militia. Another candidate is Antoine Zahra, who is said to have run a Lebanese Forces' checkpoint on the highway south of Tripoli where a number of Muslims were kidnapped.