By Xinhua,
Beirut : The Lebanese Hezbollah-led opposition announced Saturday that it will remove all armed presence in Beirut, and turn the city to the army, but it maintained that it will peruse civil disobedience until its demands are achieved.
A Lebanese opposition statement said it will end all armed presence in Beirut so that “the capital will be in the hands of the army.”
The statement came shortly after the Lebanese army called for all opposition militants to withdraw from the streets following Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Seniora’s urge to restore order in the capital, which has seen deadly clashes during the past four days which leaving at least 24 dead and more than 80 wounded.
“I call on the army to impose security on everyone in all areas and to clear armed elements from the street immediately,” Seniora said in a televised address.
The Lebanese army command then froze the government Tuesday’s decisions, saying in a statement that it decided to keep airport security Chief Gen. Wafic Shqaier in his post and handle the private phone network of Hezbollah “according to public interest and resistance security.”
The Lebanese cabinet on Tuesday decided to cease the communication network of Hezbollah and reassign Shqaier over his alleged links to the group.
Hezbollah refused the decisions and the party’s Chief Hasan Nasrallah considered it a “declaration of war against the resistance.”