Fresh Grenade Attack Rocks Tripoli

A grenade exploded at a market in the northern city of Tripoli on Saturday, a security official said, in the second such blast in the area in as many days.

The device hurled by unidentified assailants went off in Souk al-Qameh on a road between the rival neighborhoods of Bab al-Tebbaneh and Jabal Mohsen, the official told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

Nobody was injured, but some property was damaged.

The explosion came after a grenade went off outside a Sunni Muslim cemetery in the same impoverished district on Friday evening, without causing any casualties or damage.

Tripoli has in the past few years been the scene of intense clashes between Sunni supporters of Saudi- and Western-backed caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Alawite Muslims loyal to a Hizbullah-led alliance backed by Iran and Syria.

The grenade attacks also come as a deep political crisis grips the country, sparking fears of an outbreak of violence at any given moment.

Hizbullah and its allies brought down Hariri's unity government last week in a long-running dispute over a U.N. tribunal probing the 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri, Saad's father.