BIREH, Lebanon — Syria’s war barreled over the border with an angry, raucous funeral Monday for an anti-Syria cleric whose killing set off a night of deadly street battles in Beirut and raised fears that Lebanon is getting drawn into the chaos afflicting its neighbor.
The violence is a reflection of Lebanon’s political dysfunction, a legacy of years of civil war when the country became a proxy battleground for other nations. Lebanon walks a fragile fault line over Syria, which had troops on the ground here for nearly 30 years until 2005 and still has strong ties to Lebanon’s security services.
To many observers, it was only a matter of time before the violence in Syria infected Lebanon. The U.N. estimates more than 9,000 people have died in the Syrian conflict since March 2011, when President Bashar Assad started cracking down on a popular uprising.
“The Syrian regime is seeking to sow chaos in Lebanon!” Khaled Daher, a Sunni member of parliament, said during a fiery speech Monday at the funeral for Sheik Ahmed Abdul-Wahid, the slain anti-Syria cleric. “But we will not be scared.”
Daher stood surrounded by Sunni clerics and armed gunmen in the northern village of Bireh, Abdul-Wahid’s hometown. Syria is visible across the border, on the other side of a green valley dotted with homes and farms.
Gunmen shouting “Down with Bashar!” roamed the streets ahead of the funeral procession, which drew thousands of people who fired their rifles in the air as a sign of mourning.
Abdul-Wahid and his bodyguard were gunned down Sunday by a Lebanese soldier, apparently after the men failed to stop at an army checkpoint.
Inside Syria on Monday, activists said regime forces killed dozens of people Sunday in a raid on the central town of Soran in Hama province.
One activist group, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, put the death toll at 39, citing a network of sources on the ground. Syria-based activist Mustafa Osso said the figure was more than 20. The death toll could not be independently confirmed.
