Middle East & Africa | Lebanon’s Syria worries

Balance of fear

Syria’s crisis is touching Lebanon, but for now calm prevails

|BEIRUT, TRIPOLI

THERE is no love lost between Alawite and Sunni quarters of Tripoli, Lebanon's second-largest city. It lies just half an hour by car from the border with Syria, where violence increasingly pits the sects against each other. Here, bullets have often flown across the road that divides them, the aptly named Syria Street. In February Tripoli's gun battles left three dead and provoked the army to intervene. Yet now cooler heads seem to be prevailing.

This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline “Balance of fear”

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