On Friday afternoon [Jan. 18], the city of Tripoli witnessed a security incident that is the first of its kind in Lebanon since the Lebanese Civil War ended in 1990.

Sunni Salafist groups were demonstrating at a square in Lebanon’s second largest city — after the capital, Beirut — to demand the release of their comrades who have been sitting in Lebanese prisons since 2007. These members were arrested for being involved in a violent battle that happened between May 20 and Sept. 5, 2007 at a Palestinian refugee camp located near Tripoli, known as the Nahr al-Bared camp. The battle was between the Lebanese army and a fundamentalist al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadist group, known as Fatah al-Islam.

While the fundamentalists were demonstrating this afternoon, a four-car convoy transporting Lebanese Youth and Sports Minister Faisal Karami arrived at the scene. Karami is from the city of Tripoli and the son of Omar Karami, who twice served as Lebanese prime minister (from December 1990 till May 1992 and from October 2004 to April 2005). The minister’s convoy tried to pass through the square where the demonstration was taking place but dozens of armed Salafists cut off the road. There was an altercation between the minister’s bodyguards and the Salafists, and they exchanged gunfire.

Meanwhile, a number of gunmen belonging to a jihadist leader in the city, Sheikh Hossam Abdullah al-Sabbagh, gathered, and they immediately realized that Karami was in the convoy. Because the Salafists outnumbered Karami’s bodyguards, the latter tried to pull back and get away from the square. But Sabbagh’s gunmen pursued them in the streets of Tripoli and managed to launch a rocket-propelled grenade at one of the minister’s cars in the convoy. The car was burned to the ground and four bodyguards were wounded. Then the Salafists tried but failed to blow up the other cars, one of which was carrying the minister.