Clashes Renew in Akroum-Beit Jaafar, Army Officer Reportedly Hurt

Clashes renewed on Friday between residents from the rival towns of Akroum and Beit Jaafar in the northern district of Akkar near the border with Syria, after a man was killed in previous fighting on Wednesday.

NBN television said the sounds of RPGs and medium weapons echoed across the area.

OTV, meanwhile, said army officer Ali Hassan was wounded when a shell fell on his house in Akroum during the clashes.

State-run National News Agency reported that army units are trying to contain the clashes and restore calm.

On Wednesday, "a man was killed and several injured when men from Sunni-majority Akroum village clashed with the majority Shiite village of Hourani," a security official told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

The man killed was from Akroum, and there were injured on both sides.

A local official said the clash broke out when several Syrians from the border town of Qusayr, in the central province of Homs, tried to make an illegal crossing into Lebanon at the village of Hourani.

"This led to intermittent clashes that continued for three hours," said the local official.

Lebanon's borders with Syria have seen frequent violence, with regular exchanges of fire in recent weeks, some of them deadly, as well as shelling from Syria into Lebanon, stoking fears of a spillover of the Syrian crisis.

Syrian troops have laid landmines on the border with northern Lebanon, and Syria and Lebanon last month traded accusations of violating each other's territory.