BEIRUT - Lebanon's leading Salafi cleric, Dai al-Islam al-Shahhal, has warned Syria to stay out of North Lebanon or risk opening "the gates of hell." In an interview to be published in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Anbaa, Shahhal made clear that Syrian intervention in Lebanon would be met with stiff opposition.

A military incursion would open "the gates of hell and lead to what is similar to Iraq and its misery," he said, according to excerpts received by the Lebanese news outlet Naharnet.

"The Syrian command and its allies in Lebanon," Shahhal added, "are keen on driving a wedge between the Salafi movement and the Lebanese military establishment in order to drag the whole Sunni community into conflict."

Following the tenuous intra-Lebanese peace forged in Doha, Qatar, in May, residual tensions simmered between Salafist groups aligned with the Future Movement and opposition-aligned Alawites in Tripoli - where, last year, the militant Islamist group Fatah al-Islam and the Lebanese Armed Forces fought a brutal 15-week battle in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp.

Relations between certain hard-line Sunni factions and the army have remained tense.

But Shahhal said that in the event of Syrian intervention, Salafi leaders would coordinate with the army.

"The Salafi movement is not like other factions and would not take decisions to go to war or peace without coordinating its moves with all other factions because they have the right to set the national path," he said.

The recent violence in Tripoli, a large deployment of Syrian troops to the border and statements by Syrian President Bashar Assad have fueled concerns in Lebanon of a potential Syrian incursion into the North.

On Monday, a car bomb killed four Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) soldiers and at least one civilian in Tripoli, echoing a similar attack in August which left 15 dead. Monday's blast came only two days after an explosion in Damascus killed 17 people. The official Syrian Arab News Agency blamed the blast on an Islamist suicide bomber from a neighboring Arab country.

Last week, the Lebanese Army reported that 10,000 Syrian special forces had deployed to the Lebanese-Syrian border in what was called an anti-smuggling campaign.

And in early September, Assad told visiting heads of state from France, Turkey and Qatar that the growing threat of extremism in Tripoli must be addressed by the Lebanese Army, drawing sharp criticism from members of the March 14 alliance who labeled the remarks a "flagrant" violation of Lebanon's sovereignty.

According to Shahhal, the recent events form "an integral part of the deal concluded by the Syrian-Israeli negotiations which calls for [a] Syrian incursion in Tripoli and the North to finish off the Salafi movement, as a first step, and other Lebanese factions allied with Syria, as a second step."

Although the Lebanese Army and a number of political analysts have rejected the idea of an imminent Syrian invasion, concern over the violence in the Tripoli is widespread.

"Obviously, the North is becoming a proxy battleground for regional conflict ... a field to settle scores and [import] regional tension," Osama Safa, the head of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies, told The Daily Star.

Safa said that Shahhal's comments might educe a rhetorical response from Syria but that action on the ground was unlikely.

Groups are "drawing lines in the sand and crystallizing coalitions," Safa said, adding that Shahhal's comments were designed not to alienate the Lebanese government or the army.

Noting the historical enmity between Syria and the Salafis, Ahmad Mousalli, a professor at the American University of Beirut and an expert on Islamic fundamentalism, told The Daily Star that, "The scheme for war is being established."

The mood in the North can only "weaken the moderates and strengthen the radicals," he said, adding that "Syria is dancing the tango."

He cited the short-lived detente between the Salafis and Hizbullah as an indicator of confessional and regional tensions, with one group traditionally backed by Saudi Arabia and the other by Syria.

Although Mousalli seemed doubtful that Syria would launch a full-scale military invasion, he warned that hard-line Islamist groups in the North could follow the path of radicalization that took place in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"I don't think Saad Hariri [son of the slain Premier Rafiq Hariri and head of the Future Movement] can control them any more," he said.

Both Safa and Mousalli predicted that the unrest in the North would continue, albeit at varying levels.

"We can expect bombs here and there, possibly assassinations," Safa said.

Mousalli's forecast was more dire. "This is just the tip of the iceberg," he said.