Sunnis, Shiites clash with gunfire, grenades in a second day of fighting in Lebanon

Machine-gun fire and explosions could be heard coming from West Beirut, where masked gunmen were seen standing on street corners, occasionally opening fire with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. No clashes were reported in predominantly Christian East Beirut.

Downtown, home to the government where Hezbollah supporters have been camped out in protest against the state for months, remained quiet.

The clashes followed a defiant speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who said his Iranian-backed militant organization would respond with force to any attacks.

"Those who try to arrest us, we will arrest them," he said. "Those who shoot at us, we will shoot at them. The hand raised against us, we will cut it off."

It was the second day of fighting that has turned some city neighborhoods into battlegrounds and spilled over to other parts of the country.

The clashes were taking place on Corniche Mazraa, a major thoroughfare that has become a demarcation line between the two sides, and in the nearby Ras el-Nabeh area. There was no immediate word on casualties.

Earlier in the same area, troops in armored carriers moved in to separate both sides who traded insults and threw stones at each other.

The violence appeared to begin as a test of wills between political rivals who have been locked in a 17-month power struggle for control of the government. It now could be degenerating into a wider and deadlier sectarian conflict, with the Sunnis' spiritual leader denouncing Hezbollah and appealing to a largely Sunni Islamic world to intervene.

The rivals have failed to agree on electing a president, leaving the country without a head of state since November.

The latest round of tensions was sparked by the government's decision earlier this week to confront Hezbollah by replacing the Beirut airport security chief for alleged ties to the Shiite militants.

The government also declared Hezbollah's private communications network to be illegal.

Hezbollah and leaders of the 1.2-million-strong Shiite community, believed to be Lebanon's largest sect, rejected the decisions, and the airport security chief kept his job.

Supporters of the Hezbollah-led opposition blocked roads in the capital on Wednesday to enforce a strike called by labor unions protesting the government's economic policies and demanding pay raises.

The strike quickly escalated into street confrontations between supporters of the rival camps. About a dozen people were injured, mostly by stones, but no deaths were reported.

On Thursday, the violence spread outside the capital. Sunnis and Shiites exchanged gunfire in the village of Saadnayel in the eastern Bekaa Valley. Four people were injured, said security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with military regulations.

The area is on a major crossroads linking the Shiite areas of Baalbek, a Hezbollah stronghold, with central Lebanon and Beirut.

Nasrallah claimed Hezbollah's secure network of primitive private land lines helped the guerrillas fight Israel's high-tech army in the 2006 summer war.

He said the telecommunications network was "the most important part of the weapons of the resistance" and added Hezbollah had a duty to defend those weapons.

Hezbollah supporters kept the road to the country's only airport blocked, effectively closing the airport for a second day.

The clashes have brought back memories of the devastating 1975-1990 civil war that has left lasting scars on Lebanon.

Beirut residents are now seeing fresh demarcation lines, burning tires and roadblocks.

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