BEIRUT: Lebanon’s President Michel Sleiman cautioned the Shia group Hezbollah yesterday over its militia fighting alongside regime troops in neighbouring Syria.
“The resistance is more noble and more important than anything, and should not get bogged down in the sands of dissension, whether in Syria or Lebanon,” he said in a statement, referring to Hezbollah’s traditional focus on fighting Israel.
“The resistance has fought and liberated (Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon) because it acts for a national cause and not a confessional one,” Sleiman added.
The statement came as the militant group battled Syrian rebel fighters in the opposition stronghold of Qusayr in central Homs province, where Syrian troops launched an assault on Sunday.
Bahraini protesters clash with police
MANAMA: Hundreds of Bahraini Shias angered by a raid last week on a top cleric’s home clashed with police yesterday, while thousands more gathered in the cleric’s village for a peaceful sit-in against their Sunni-led government.
The raid by security forces on the home of Ayatollah Sheikh Issa Qassim on May 17 infuriated the opposition and drew condemnation from neighbouring Shia power Iran.
The raid on the ayatollah’s house prompted main opposition group Al Wefaq to announce on Wednesday that it would withdraw from reconciliation talks with the government for two weeks. Protesters in the village of Diraz, west of the capital Manama, threw stones at hundreds of riot police who responded with tear gas and water cannons, a witness said.
Saboteurs blow up Yemen oil pipeline
SANA’A: Saboteurs blew up a section of Yemen’s main oil pipeline yesterday, partly disrupting output, the defence ministry and a local official said.
The attack struck in the Sarwaj district of Marib province, east of the capital, the ministry said in a statement.
A local official said that engineers had been sent to the area to try to restore the flow of oil on the 320km pipeline from the Safer field to the Red Sea port of Hodeida. The pipeline has been hit repeatedly by saboteurs, with two attacks last month alone.
In December, the army launched an offensive against tribesmen suspected of being behind the attacks, sparking clashes in which 17 people were killed. Electricity Minister Saleh Sumai has blamed loyalists of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was forced to step down early last year after holding power in Sana’a since 1978. Agencies
