Lebanon on edge after deadly sectarian flare-up

Six people were killed and dozens wounded Thursday when violence erupted following a rally by Shia protesters demanding the removal of the judge investigating last year's devastating Beirut port blast.
The Shia movements Amal and Hezbollah that organised the protest in front the Justice Palace accused the Lebanese Forces (LF) Christian party of engineering the chaos by aiming sniper fire at the demonstrators.
The front page of the Al-Akhbar daily, which is close to Hezbollah, carried a portrait of LF leader Samir Geagea donning Adolf Hitler's uniform and toothbrush moustache with a headline that read "No doubt".
The LF strenuously denied any involvement in Thursday's flare-up and said Hezbollah was "invading" off-limits neighbourhoods when the violence broke out.
A heavy army presence was visible on the streets Friday amid fears of an escalation.
On Thursday, Amal and Hezbollah militiamen in their hundreds filled the streets around Tayouneh, a notorious civil war flashpoint near the spot where the April 1975 bus attack often presented as the trigger of the conflict occurred.
As a deluge of bullets riddled residential facades, and gaggles of fighters wearing ammunition vests took over the streets and emptied their magazines haphazardly, civilians crouched in homes, terrified.
When Maryam Daher, a 44-year-old mother of two, saw civilians running for safety on television, she broke down.
"It all came back to me," she said. "At the very same moment, I received a message from my son's school asking parents to come and collect the children."
One of the six people killed was a mother of five hit in the head by a stray bullet inside her home.
As preparations in southern Lebanon and in Beirut were under way for the funerals, the country marked a day of mourning declared by the presidency.
France, the United States and United Nations appealed for a de-escalation but also insisted on the need to allow the port explosion probe to continue unhindered.
Russia said Friday it was "extremely concerned" about the tensions and called on all sides to "show restraint".
What was one of the world's biggest ever non-nuclear explosions and Lebanon's worst peacetime disaster killed 215 people, wounded thousands and flattened swathes of the capital.
The investigation has not yet established who was responsible for the tonnes of ammonium nitrate which had been poorly stored at the port for years nor what exactly started the fire that detonated the fertiliser.
Hezbollah and Amal accuse Bitar of political bias in an investigation which Lebanon's ruling elite as a whole has hampered at every turn for more than a year.
Two Amal former ministers are among the top officials Bitar has summoned for questioning.
The discreet 47-year-old judge is seen by the blast victims' families and many others who want the wholesale removal the political elite as the country's best chance to achieve justice and cause some kind of political shake-up.
"Judges must be free from violence. They must be free of threats. They must be free of intimidation, including that of Hezbollah," State Department spokesman Ned Price said.
Bitar's entourage says the young judge is aware of the risks in a country's whose history is littered with unpunished assassinations but remains determined to press his probe.
The latest appeals rulings on the various legal challenges launched by subpoenaed ministers currently allow Bitar to resume an investigation which was suspended multiple times.
But with the day of mourning on Friday and a religious holiday running until Monday, Bitar's investigation will not resume before next week.