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BEIRUT - Four people were shot dead in clashes between pro- and anti-government activists in Lebanon on Thursday, casting a shadow over donor pledges of US$7.6 billion ($10.8 billion) to the US-backed government facing a Hezbollah-led challenge.
Two opposition students and two other people were shot dead and 35 were injured, many by gunfire, at Beirut's Arab University, security sources said.
Fighting started between students with sticks and stones on the university campus then spilt into nearby streets. It developed into exchanges of gunfire from assault rifles and pistols involving students and residents from both sides.
An opposition campaign against the government, which is struggling to recover from last year's war with Israel, has raised tensions between Sunnis and Shi'ites in Lebanon, still recovering from a 1975-90 civil war.
It was not immediately clear who opened fire but NBN and Al-Manar television, run by the opposition's Shi'ite Muslim Hezbollah movement, blamed the shootings on pro-government gunmen loyal to Sunni leader Saad al-Hariri.
Soldiers fired into the air to try to disperse the crowds and were later deployed in large numbers in an effort to control the clashes. Thick smoke rose from the area, where rioters had set cars and tyres ablaze.
Soldiers used military trucks to evacuate scores of civilians trapped on the streets by the violence.
Rival television stations blamed each other's camps for the fighting. Witnesses reported shots fired at students from rooftops in the mainly Sunni areas and attacks by a Shi'ite mob on a Sunni-run school in another area of the capital.
Hezbollah issued a statement urging its supporters to pull out of the streets around the university, while Hariri urged supporters to show self-restraint and calm.
"What everyone should do now is halt the strife ... We must all be united or we have to look for our country in the graveyard of history," Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a Shi'ite opposition leader, told local television stations by telephone.
Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said from Paris where he was at an aid conference: "I call on everyone to return to the voice of reason."
The clashes died down after the appeals but tension in several Beirut neighbourhoods was high after darkness.
The opposition launched nationwide protests on Tuesday which shut down much of Lebanon and sparked violence in which three people were killed and 176 wounded.
The opposition wants veto power in government and early parliamentary elections to topple Siniora's cabinet. The prime minister and his main backer, parliamentary majority leader Hariri, have refused to give in to the demands.
Lebanon won more than US$7.6 billion in grants and soft loans at a Paris conference on Thursday to help it cope with a debt mountain and recover from war.
Some donors hope to help the U.S.-backed Beirut government weather the threat from the opposition.
Saudi Arabia headed the list of donors with a promise of US$1.1 billion of development aid and grants, the United States pledged US$770 million and the Arab Monetary Fund and World Bank offered funding of around US$700 million apiece.
"The total sum collected for Lebanon amounts to a little more than US$7.6 billion," French President Jacques Chirac told the conference after around 40 countries and organisations outlined their funding plans at the one-day meeting.
"I'm overjoyed by this," he added to loud applause.
Lebanon is still struggling to rebuild from its 1975-1990 civil war and is weighed down by US$40 billion of debt, equal to 180 per cent of gross domestic product.
War between Israel and Shi'ite Hezbollah guerrillas last year left much of the country's infrastructure bombed and many Shi'ite villages and districts wrecked.
- REUTERS
