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| Four Amal members wounded
in Bekaa shooting incident BEIRUT - Four Amal Movement members were wounded in the Bekaa town of Taalbaya on Wednesday when unknown assailants opened fire at their car at they were erecting posters of Imam Musa al-Sadr. Sadr, the founder of Amal, will be honored by his party on August 31, the 30th anniversary of his mysterious disappearance while on a visit to Libya. A statement released by Amal later on Wednesday accused Future Movement partisans of being behind the attack and identified the assailants as Haydar Melhem al-Hoshaymi, Ahmad Qamara, Mahmoud Qamara and Wissam Muhiyidinne. The Amal statement said that Hussein Abu Hamdan (Amal) was seriously wounded as a result of the attack. The statement also accused Future supporters in the town of Taalbaya and nearby villages of pressuring people not to participate in the Sadr ceremony, scheduled for Sunday. "Such actions by the Future Movement represent a coup against the Doha Agreement and an attempt to spread tension and chaos in the country," the statement said. The Doha Agreement, which was signed by feuding factions last May, put an end to an extended political crisis in Lebanon. Security sources told the National News Agency on Wednesday
that army troops deployed heavily in Taalbaya after the attack and arrested a number of
suspects. The Bekaa towns of Taalbaya and Saadnayel were the scene of violent clashes between March 14 and opposition supporters earlier this year. The recent tension in Bekaa between Amal and Future supporters came after clashes on Monday between the same groups in the Beirut neighborhood of Ras al-Nabaa. Three people were wounded in the clashes. In a separate development on Wednesday, a Palestinian militant was wounded in a clash between members of Fatah and Jund al-Sham in the southern Palestinian refugee camp of Ein al-Hilweh. Security reports said the wounded militant was a Fatah supporter. The clash was followed by a meeting that grouped officials from Fatah as well as Islamist parties in the camp, well-informed sources told The Daily Star. The different factions reportedly agreed on eliminating all armed demonstrations inside and around the camp while maintaining an armed presence in the vicinities of the different parties' official headquarters. The factions also agreed to ban masked gunmen in the camp and treating them as suspects except for a specific number of militants who are in charge of guarding the headquarters. -Daily Star |
