No one was harmed when bullets struck the defense minister of Lebanon’s automobile
According to officials, shots were fired at Maurice Slim’s automobile, the interim Defense Minister of Lebanon.
On Thursday, two Bullets Struck one of the car’s windows as it was moving through the Jisr el-Bashra neighborhood on the southeast side of the capital, Beirut.
Bassam al-Mawlawi, the interior Minister, said a probe was underway to determine whether the event was caused by stray gunfire or if the minister was the target.
In any event, Mawlawi remarked, “We thank God for the safety of the minister of defense.”
It happened while the Lebanese army was being sent to a Christian town in the foothills southeast of Beirut as a result of a fatal gunfight between locals and Hezbollah fighters.
A day after a truck driven by Hezbollah members overturned on a sharp bend on a major highway connecting Beirut to the Bekaa Valley and Syria, about ten army vehicles were stationed near Kahaleh on Thursday.
Abboud Abi Khalil, the mayor of Kahaleh, claimed that villagers had encircled the vehicle on Wednesday night and demanded to know what was inside before Hezbollah guarding it opened fire and killed one of them. Hezbollah, which is supported by Iran, said that one of its men was also shot and later died from his injuries.
The Hezbollah member killed in the violence, Ahmed Qassas, was given a military funeral in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Thursday, his coffin draped in Hezbollah’s yellow flag.
“We will not be dragged into strife, and we will not achieve the goals of those who want to take the country into strife,” Hezbollah’s Sayyed Ali Fahs said during the funeral.
Both sides have blamed one another for sparking the gunfight.
In a statement on Thursday, the army stated that two persons had been murdered and said that ammunition had been taken from the truck.
“The cargo of the truck has been transported to a military facility, and the appropriate judicial authorities have opened an investigation,” it continued.
The financial crisis that has plagued Lebanon for four years has been its most unstable period since the country’s civil war from 1975 to 1990. Politicians’ years-long corruption and wasteful spending were to blame.
The dominant force in Lebanon is Hezbollah. Its opponents charge the group with undermining the state in Lebanon, where its arsenal has long been a source of contention.
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