BEIRUT — Lebanon's political and military leaders struggled to pull the country back Saturday from a deepening civil conflict that has left at least 34 people dead in four days of violence between Iranian-backed militias and supporters of the pro-U.S. government.
By late Saturday afternoon, the government appeared to have backed away from the political decree that sparked the confrontation. And the Shiite militia Hezbollah had given up its control of West Beirut, which it had seized a day earlier in an offensive that stunned Lebanese and sent shock waves across the region.
But throughout the day, there were ominous signs of aggression in a country still haunted by its long civil war, including the tit-for-tat sectarian attacks that characterize the Sunni-Shiite conflict in Iraq. At a late morning funeral for a victim of the previous day's violence, a gunman believed to be Shiite opened fire on Sunni mourners in the procession who had trashed his shop. Two men were killed.
Militiamen of Lebanon's Druze sect also were suspected of torturing and shooting at least two Shiite Hezbollah supporters southeast of the capital. The corpses were dumped in front of a hospital.
And in and around the northern coastal city of Tripoli, fighting between pro- and anti-Syrian political groups left 12 people dead.
The violence comes amid heightened regional tensions between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, which strongly back the government, and Iran and Syria, which support Hezbollah and the opposition.
But a measure of calm returned after Prime Minister Fouad Siniora publicly asked the army to intervene.
"We request the army to fulfill their role in protecting the Lebanese," he said in a televised speech. "I ask them to enforce stability in all the regions and take the arms from the streets, end the sit-in and bring back life to the capital and Lebanon."
Afterward, olive-clad army soldiers flooded into West Beirut to claim positions that had been seized a day earlier by Hezbollah, which faded back to its strongholds south and west of central Beirut.
The army won the respect of Lebanon's political factions last year for defeating an Al Qaeda-linked group holed up in a Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli. It is viewed as the one Lebanese institution not beholden to partisan interests.
