Lebanon clashes rage overnight; 12 soldiers dead

Lebanese army soldiers, take their positions during clashes between followers of a radical Sunni cleric Sheik Ahmad al-Assir and Shiite gunmen, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Sunday, June 23, 2013. A Lebanese security official says clashes have erupted in the south between Lebanese factions supporting opposing sides in the Syrian civil war. Several of Lebanese soldiers were killed and wounded. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

A medic helps an injured Lebanese soldier after his body caught on fire, during clashes between followers of a radical Sunni cleric Sheik Ahmad al-Assir and Shiite gunmen, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Sunday, June 23, 2013. A Lebanese security official says clashes have erupted in the south between Lebanese factions supporting opposing sides in the Syrian civil war. Several of Lebanese soldiers were killed and wounded. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanese army units battling followers of a hard-line Sunni Muslim cleric closed in Monday on the mosque complex where they were holed up in a southern coastal city, the national news agency said. It said a total of 12 soldiers had been killed since fighting erupted a day earlier.

The clashes in Sidon, Lebanon's third-largest city some 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Beirut, is the latest bout of violence in Lebanon linked to the conflict in neighboring Syria.

It is the bloodiest yet involving the army — at least three of those killed are officers. The Lebanese media has depicted the clashes as a test for the state in containing armed groups that have taken up the cause of the warring sides in Syria, whose sectarian makeup mirrors that of its smaller neighbor.

The fighting between troops and armed supporters of Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir has transformed the city, which had been largely spared the violence plaguing border areas near Syria, into a combat zone.

The National News Agency said the clashes also left fifty wounded. The report said it was not clear how many gunmen were killed or wounded in the clashes, nor whether there were civilian casualties. Local media said several gunmen on al-Assir's side had also died, but did not give specifics.

Machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenade explosions caused panic among residents of Sidon. Residents reported power and water outage.

The city streets appeared largely deserted Monday, and local media reported many residents were asking for evacuation from the area of the fighting, a heavily populated neighborhood in the city. The news agency said a government building was hit. The local municipality said that the city is "a war zone," appealing for a cease-fire to evacuate the civilians and wounded in the area.

Many people living on upper floors came down or fled to safer areas, while others were seen running away from fighting areas carrying children. Others remained locked up in their homes or shops, fearing getting caught in the crossfire. Gray smoke billowed over parts of the city.

The clashes erupted Sunday in the predominantly Sunni city after troops arrested a follower of al-Assir. The army says supporters of the cleric opened fire without provocation on an army checkpoint.

It tied the attack to the war in neighboring Syria and said it will hit back at attempts to sow strife with "an iron fist." Al-Assir is a virulent critic of the powerful Shiite militant Hezbollah group, which along with its allies dominates Lebanon's government. He supports rebels fighting to oust Syria's President Bashar Assad.

A few Hezbollah supporters in the city were briefly drawn into the fight Sunday, firing on al-Assir's supporters. At least one was killed, according to his relatives in the city who spoke anonymously out of concerns for their security.

But the group appeared to be staying largely out of the ongoing clashes. Last week, al-Assir supporters fought with pro-Hezbollah gunmen, leaving two killed.

Early Monday, al-Assir appealed to his supporters through his Twitter account in other parts of Lebanon to rise to his help, threatening to widen the scale of clashes.

The tweets did not give a clear statement on how the battle began. It came after a series of incidents pitting the cleric's followers against other groups in the town, including Hezbollah supporters and the army.

Fighting also broke out in parts of Ein el-Hilweh, a teeming Palestinian refugee camp near Sidon, where al-Assir has supporters. Islamist factions inside the camp lobbed mortars at military checkpoints around the camp. Tension also spread to the north in Tripoli, Lebanon's second largest city. Masked gunmen roamed the city center, firing in the air and forcing shops and businesses to shut down in solidarity with al-Assir. Dozens of gunmen also set fire to tires, blocking roads. The city's main streets were emptying out. There was no unusual military or security deployment.

The army announced late Sunday additional force deployments around Beirut.

Sectarian clashes in Lebanon tied to the Syrian conflict have intensified in recent weeks, especially after Hezbollah sent fighters to support Assad's forces. Most of the rebels fighting to topple Assad are from Syria's Sunni majority, while the President Bashar Assad belongs to the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

In Syria, activists reported fighting Monday between Syrian troops and rebels in the northern province of Aleppo as well as districts on the edge of the Syrian capital and its suburbs.

Clashes in Lebanon have also mostly pitted Sunni against Shiite. The most frequent outbreaks have involved rival neighborhoods in the northern port city of Tripoli, close to the Syrian border.

The clashes in Sidon centered on the Bilal bin Rabbah Mosque, a compound where al-Assir preaches and was believed to be holed up. The cleric is believed to have hundreds of armed supporters in Sidon involved in the fighting. Dozens of al-Assir's gunmen also partially shut down the main highway linking south Lebanon with Beirut. On Monday, they opened fire in other parts of the city, with local media reporting gunshots in the city's market.

By Sunday evening, the army had laid siege to the mosque, sealing off access to it from all directions.

The military openly linked the clashes of Sidon to the conflict in Syria. In a statement Sunday, it said the attacks on its forces by al-Assir supporters were unprovoked, and accusing the cleric of seeking to "incite strife" in Lebanon.

President Michel Suleiman called for an emergency security meeting later Monday.

Headlines of Lebanon's newspapers were all dominated by the violence in Sidon, with many seeing it as a test for the state to impose order. "An attempt to assassinate Sidon and the military," read the headline of the daily al-Safir. "Al-Assir crosses the red line," read another headline in al-Jomhouria daily. A third headline in al-Nahar read: "Yesterday war in Sidon. Today, decisiveness or settlement?"

Change in weather needed at Colorado fire

By JERI CLAUSING | Associated Press – 3 mins 2 secs ago

Colorado State Patrol officer Jessie Bartunek talks to a motorist at a checkpoint near South Fork, Colo., Sunday, June 23, 2013. A large wildfire near a popular summer retreat in southern Colorado continues to be driven by winds and fueled by dead trees in a drought-stricken area, authorities said Sunday. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

Wildfire smoke blankets a ridge Sunday, June 23, 2013, near Alpine, Colo. A large wildfire near a popular summer retreat in southern Colorado continues to be driven by winds and fueled by dead trees in a drought-stricken area, authorities said Sunday. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

DEL NORTE, Colo. (AP) — Crews defending small homes, a ski area and a handful of roads against an erratic wildfire in Colorado's southwest mountains hoped Monday for a break — any break — in the weather that will allow them to launch a more strategic assault on the backcountry blaze.

The West Fork Fire likely will burn for months, said incident commander Pete Blume. And crews are not expecting to make any real gains against the 117-square-mile burn until the summer monsoon season brings cooler temperatures and rains, hopefully in early July.

"This is a significant fire with significant problems, and we are not going to see any significant containment until we have significant changes in the weather," said Blume, who is with the Rocky Mountain Type I Incident Command.

The fire is feeding on beetle-killed trees and is fanned by hot, windy weather. Those conditions were expected to continue across much of Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, where a 119-square-mile wildfire in the mountains of Gila National Forest is expected to grow this week.

Some 900 firefighters with a variety of aircraft were in southwestern Colorado, and more were arriving. But so far they have been in an almost completely defensive mode, waiting for the 30-to 40-mile-an-hour afternoon winds that have grounded aircraft and driven flames to subside.

The fire's price tag has topped $22 million, and the effort has just begun.

More than 1,000 residents and visitors left homes, cabins and RV parks in South Fork and surrounding areas Friday. As of Monday, no structures were known to have been lost.

The blaze started June 5 with a lighting strike in a rugged, remote area of the San Juan Mountains, west of the Continental Divide. A second lightning strike sparked a fire east of the divide. The two then joined, making a fast run Thursday and Friday at popular tourist areas, including South Fork and the Wolf Creek Ski Area.

A third lightning strike, meantime, sparked another fire to the West, creating what is now called the West Fork complex, the largest and most intense to ever hit this area, Blume said. That fire was moving north but was several miles from the historic mining town of Creede. Near the headwaters of the Rio Grande River, the town now has a thriving tourist industry that relies on its colorful past.

In Creede on Monday, residents and tourists shopping went about business as usual. West of town, on Highway 149, hills smoldered above homes where firefighters worked to contain the blaze.

Such larger and longer-burning fires are far from unusual in the drought- and beetle-stricken West. The Rio Grande Forest, for example, had another dry winter. More than half of its hundreds of thousands of acres of mature spruce trees have been killed by beetles, turning the usually fire resistant trees into tinder, Blume said.

Crews in Colorado also are being challenged by the high altitude, which adds to the danger and complexity of launching air assaults in smoke and high winds, said Larry Trapp, a branch director of air operations with Rocky Mountain Type I Incident Command working the east side of Continental Divide. Wolf Creek's summit is 11,904 feet; South Fork's elevation is 8,208 feet. Some peaks in the Rio Grande Forest surpass 13,000 feet.

Among the air resources on the way, he said, is a helicopter with infrared technology that can fly through the smoke to map power lines above the tree line. That will allow more tankers to take to the sky to drop retardant on the planes, Trapp said.

About a dozen fires burned elsewhere in Colorado, including a nearly 21-square-mile wildfire near the southern Colorado town of Walsenburg that was 50 percent contained.

___

Associated Press writer Greg Bull contributed to this report.

Far-right Israelis stir tensions over Jerusalem holy site

Palestinian children walk in a line during a visit to a compound revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, in Jerusalem's Old City June 23, 2013. REUTERS/Darren Whiteside

By Allyn Fisher-Ilan

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Far-right Israelis are pressing for an end to an effective ban on holding Jewish prayers at a Jerusalem holy compound once dominated by Biblical temples and now home to al-Aqsa mosque, one of Islam's most revered sites.

Palestinians oppose Jewish worship at the vast stone plaza overlooking Judaism's Western Wall as a potential threat to access for Muslims.

Aware of the volatile mix of politics and religion, Israel has largely stymied such prayer for 46 years by having its police prevent Jewish worship at the site on grounds it could cause a public disturbance.

Palestinian concerns have been heightened, however, by the fact that allies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are among the most vocal advocates of Jewish prayer at the 35-acre site that is revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.

This month alone, Israeli police have hauled away half a dozen Israelis from the site. A Jewish Israeli and an Arab citizen were held in connection with a brawl that injured a Muslim official and four other Jewish men were detained for prostrating themselves on the holy ground.

Several other Israelis have been questioned in the past two months for trying to pray at the compound during police-escorted sightseeing tours. A lamb was seized from another Israeli who had plans to slaughter it in ritual sacrifice.

Israeli police accompany most visitors to the compound, where escorted tours are held frequently. They cross a wooden bridge to a gate where plastic police shields and other riot-control gear are stored, a ready display of how quickly the otherwise serene atmosphere can sometimes go awry.

Visitors are closely watched by both the police and the Muslim religious officials of the Waqf who administer the compound and keep an eye out to make sure no Jewish worship takes place. Anyone wearing Jewish religious garb is generally kept away from the Islamic holy tract.

At the compound, one group of visitors walked past al-Aqsa, drawing shouting from Muslim women sitting in the shade of tree and from Palestinian children attending a day camp. They ignored the catcalls and continued deeper into the plaza.

"EVIL PLOT"

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has denounced the Israeli visits as a part of a "dangerous and an evil plot to demolish al-Aqsa" and build what he calls "an alleged temple".

Wedged into the compound atop the ramparts of Jerusalem's walled Old City is al-Aqsa, originally erected 1,300 years ago, rebuilt in the 11th century after an earthquake and now Islam's third holiest site, and the 7th-century golden Dome of the Rock shrine, the oldest known Islamic monument.

The plaza, from which the Prophet Mohammed is traditionally believed to have ascended into heaven, has an explosive past as a core issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israel captured the area, along with the rest of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Middle East war. The Jewish state then annexed East Jerusalem as part of its capital in a move never recognized internationally.

In 2000, Palestinian protests over a visit to the site by then Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon spiraled into deadly clashes and a five-year Palestinian uprising in which thousands died.

Palestinian Religious Affairs Minister Mahmoud al-Habash said last month the conflict over the plaza "may lead to an explosion" and that Palestinian authorities had complained to the United States and other Western intermediaries.

Also in May, Israeli Housing Minister Uri Ariel, a Jewish settler in the occupied West Bank who is from the far-right Jewish Home Party, said in a largely tongue-in-cheek remark in parliament that he would "definitely be happy" to be assigned the job of rebuilding a new holy temple.

While some Jewish zealots advocate such construction, such a project has never been on the agenda of Israeli governments.

However, one member of Netanyahu's Likud party, legislator Tzipi Hotovely, visited the compound on the eve of her wedding last month. She said her pilgrimage was symbolic of a historic yearning "to rebuild on the ruins of Jerusalem". A Likud colleague, Miri Regev, has said the site should be shared between Islam and Judaism so that Jews could pray there openly.

Israeli police have barred further visits by another Likud lawmaker, Moshe Feiglin, an ultra-rightist who has been arrested in the past for what police said were attempts to worship on the plaza. Officials said they feared Feiglin's presence could stir violent Palestinian protests.

Most of those campaigning for Jewish prayer in the compound represent a far-right minority, but many Muslims "see a provocation, and blame the (Israeli) government, so we have a big problem", said Israeli political scientist Yitzhak Reiter.

Many Orthodox Jews once rejected the idea of praying in the compound, citing religious rules barring anyone not descended from one of the ancient priests from stepping on hallowed ground where holy scriptures were once kept.

Israel has held Jewish prayers instead at the nearby Western Wall remnant of one of the ancient temples.

POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF PRAYER

But the idea of holding prayers inside the elevated compound as well has acquired more political significance over the years.

Pro-settler Israelis fear that yielding any control over the compound could lead to a withdrawal from other occupied territory they see as a biblical birthright and which Palestinians seek for a state.

"This isn't a religious issue at all," Feiglin told Reuters in a recent interview. "The question is who does the mount belong to, the Jews or the Arabs?"

Friction at the site also looms over an Israeli plan to expand the concrete prayer plaza at the Western Wall, one of Judaism's holiest sites, to try and accommodate Jews seeking more liberal prayer services than most Orthodox custom permits.

Currently Israel must deploy hundreds of police to prevent violence whenever angry ultra-Orthodox protesters confront women activists who hold monthly prayer sessions at the site.

Muslims reject any Israeli construction in the area, though, and worry that any expansion of the Western Wall plaza may involve moving the footbridge at what is known as the Moghrabi Gate entrance to the compound and its Islamic holy sites.

(Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Writing by Allyn Fisher-Ilan, Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Mark Heinrich)