Beirut clash fires up sectarian anger in echo of civil war

The shootout on the streets of Beirut between rival Christian and Muslim groups last week revived memories of the country’s 1975-90 civil war

BEIRUT -- He was only a year old when his panicked father picked him up and they fled with his mother from the gunfire rattling their neighborhood. It was the day Lebanon’s civil war started 46 years ago. His family’s apartment building in Beirut was on the frontline.

Now 47, Bahij Dana did the same thing last week. He evacuated his wife and two of his kids as gun battles raged for hours outside the same building. Civil defense rescuers came to help his father and mother, stuck in the lower floors.

“History is repeating itself,” Dana said.

The battle Thursday went on for five hours between supporters of Lebanon’s two powerful Shiite factions and gunmen believed to be supporters of a Christian party. It took place on the line between Beirut’s Chiyah and Ain el-Rumaneh neighborhoods, the same notorious frontline that bisected the capital into warring sections during the country’s dark civil war era.