The continued clashes between Sunni and Alawite fighters in the city of Tripoli in northern Lebanon have resulted in 31 killed and more than 250 wounded since Sunday (May 19). The continuation of violence with the warring parties using mortars and heavy weaponry for the first time has raised concerns that it could escalate into a new civil war as a spillover of the Syrian civil war.

The Lebanese army has deployed its troops in the Alawite neighborhood Jebel Mohsen that supports the Syrian government, and it was attempting to complete its deployment in the Sunni Bab al-Tabaneh district, which supports the armed opposition in Syria. But the fighters of Bab al-Tabaneh have conditioned that on the surrender of Rifaat Eid, the Alawite leader of the Lebanese Arab Democratic Party, to the Lebanese army.

It is worth noting that a political sectarian rivalry has existed between the two areas since the 1980s, but the Syrian crisis has brought it to a dangerous level.

The Tripoli clashes came on the heels of the battle for Qusair in Syria's central province of Homs, where Lebanon’s Hezbollah group and the army of Syria’s Alawite president, Bashar al-Assad, beat back Syrian Sunni opposition factions and their jihadi allies. The Tripoli violence erupted hours after news that the Syrian army, supported by Hezbollah, had launched an offensive against the opposition fighters in Qusair.