As the Syrian uprising degenerates, Business booms for traffickers of weapons of the Lebanon

Abu Rida barely has time to talk. As carefully, it attaches a stock of artisanal folding on a dilapidated AK-47 assault rifle, the torso barrel arms dealer quoted price to a group of young men who seek to purchase weapons and ammunition. Every few seconds his cell rings, yet another client passes a command or door on the past offers.

Unrest in the neighbouring countries of the Syria was good for business, as Abu Rida and other arms dealers served at the Lebanon find themselves overwhelmed by the Syrians to protect their families in cases where violence worsensresearch or the means to pull back on the security forces sent to crush the rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad. (See history of photo of the AK-47).

"There is a frenzy arm sale" Abu Rida said, "and it is all the courses in Syria." All of this. "He added that the weapons are also flowing in the Iraq Syria. Most wanted guns are assault rifles - the ubiquitous AK-47 and M-16 variants. A good quality Kalashnikov Russian, known in Lebanon as trade a "circle 11" de footprint stamped on his metalwork, today retrieves $1,600 - an increase of $400 a month previously. In 2006, the same weapon only cost about $500 and $600. The M4 assault rifle with grenade launcher, a weapon commonly carried by US troops, costs $ 15,000. Another popular weapon is a short barrel AK-47 known locally as the "bin Laden", because the Chief of al-Qaeda former one as a prop used routinely in his videos. The "Bin Laden" costs $ 3,750, almost 20 percent from last month.

But pas of all cases are related to the Syria: enter the door of Abu Rida cramped workshop bursts open and three young men, one of them jumping on one foot due to a gunshot wound. Minutes earlier, they had been involved in a shoot-out with a rival gang in a nearby district. They ask Abu Rida ammunition for their guns, including an automatic Tokarev Russian. Abu Rida told them that he has several boxes of ammunition for the Tokarev, but they date back to 1958. "I do not want to sell to you because the sleeves cannot fire," he said. (See pictures of bloody protests in Syria).

Arms sales boom seems to be motivated mainly by private demand, although there are persistent rumours of political factions in the Lebanon and elsewhere sending of large quantities of weapons in Syria by the traditional smuggling routes. The Syrian authorities have blamed "armed bands" for much of the violence in Syria. Last month, Assad accused Jamal Jarrah, a MP Lebanese Sunni regime and a member of the movement of the future, led by Saad Hariri, the Prime Minister of concierge, the Organization of arms transfers to the Syria. Jarrah has dismissed the application.

Also last month, a truck refrigerator filled with automatic weapons, grenade launchers, sniper rifles, ammunition and night vision goggles was seized by Customs Syrian passing in the Iraq Syria, press agency SANA Syria. The driver stated have been paid $20,000 by an Iraqi to deliver Syria weapons.

Policies and Lebanese security sources said time only during the past two weeks, the large quantities of weapons were shipped in the North of the city of Tripoli. The origins of the alleged arms shipments are not clear as it is their final destination. Security sources said that the arms - mainly AK-47 and rocket launchers - fall of Syria. But according to Rifaat Eid, the leader of the Alawi community in Tripoli (the sect even which constitutes the backbone of the Assad regime), the weapons are distributed to Sunni opponents North of the Lebanon. "Thousands of weapons fighting streets come", he said. "There are countries who play the game of weapons with us." (See pictures of the bullet manufacturing industry).

The line between the adjacent to Bab Tebbaneh populated neighbourhood of Alawi Jabal Mohsen of Tripoli and Sunni district is one of the most unstable homes in sectarian mosaic of the Lebanon. There is palpable anxiety here that if the unrest in Syria spill in the Lebanon, Tripoli will be the first place to erupt.

But the allies of emerging infectious diseases have also to distribute weapons. Rumours abound in Tripoli of a batch of Iranian AK - 47 s having been sent the movement Hezbollah Shi'ite for a Sunni politician allied in the North of the Lebanon. One of the assistants of the politician would have seen that rapid profit could be made by selling the gun to Syrian buyers. Cue deep embarrassment when Syrian security forces fell on AK - 47, manufactured by their Iranian ally in the hands of supporters of the opposition.

Still, tech-savvy young opposition activists who organized the movement of protest in Syria prefer to load Facebook pages rather than guns and insist on the fact that the uprising should remain Pacific. But there are growing indications that some members of the Syrian opposition is armed and are shooting back. AS the crackdown by the Syrian security forces intensified - and the regime comes under increasing international pressure - some are beginning to predict that an armed conflict is inevitable. The leader of the opposition young Tel Nimrud, a beleaguered Syrian town two miles north of the border with the Lebanon, says that the confrontation between the protest movement and the regime will soon be "follow the example of Libya".

"It will be an armed struggle against the Government," he said. "Until that weapons here, we will fight with our bare chests".

A third Intifadeh? Nakba Deadly protests Spark fears of escalating the border of Israel and Lebanon

South Lebanon Sunday witnessed its deadliest day since the month-long 2006 Israel-Hizballah war when 10 Palestinian demonstrators were reported shot dead and another 112 wounded as Israeli troops opened fire on protests along the border fence. The casualties came as a massive crowd of Palestinians gathered at Maroun er Ras, a small hilltop village overlooking the border with Israel, to commemorate the 63 rd anniversary of the Nakba, or Catastrophe, when the state of Israel was established.

By Sunday night, the militant Lebanese Shi'ite group Hizballah was on alert and United Nations peacekeepers, known as UNIFIL, and Lebanese troops were planning heightened security measures along the border to prevent the retaliatory firing of rockets into Israel and a continuing escalation of cross border violence. (See photos of today's violent intifadeh.)

The protests were not an isolated event. Other Nakba demonstrations were held in Jordan, Egypt and Syria, where up to four Palestinians were killed in a rare infiltration of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from Syria. (Israel said that one infiltrator was killed.) Some organizers of the Nakba commemoration had hoped that it would herald the onset of a "third intifadeh" of peaceful mass protests to compel Israel to honor the rights of Palestinians living under occupation or whom were expelled from their homes during the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948.

The biggest of the border protests by far was in Lebanon, where an estimated 50,000 Palestinians were bussed from refugee camps scattered around Lebanon to Maroun er Ras. The huge turnout surprised even organizers. "I was expecting 21.000 at the most." "We ran out of nozzles to carry everyone," said Mahmoud Zeidan, a protest organizer from the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon. "ain al hilweh looks deserted." "I haven't seen it so empty since the 1982 Israeli invasion when everyone evacuated," he said. (See photos of flaring tempers between Palestine and Israel on the Nakba.)

With the narrow winding road leading to Maroun er Ras blocked by parked buses, entire families from toddlers to stooped and wrinkled old men began climbing the steep northern slopes of the hill to reach the village. Across the verdant flower-speckled hillside, thin rivers of humanity defied gravity to steadily flow uphill, red, green and black Palestinian flags fluttering in the balmy spring breeze. Stout grandmothers wearing thick cotton dresses and white headscarves panted and wheezed, red faced, as youngsters scrambled past them. The vast majority of those participating in the event were born after 1948 and have never seen their original homeland, let alone visited their ancestral homes in what is now Israel. On cresting the hill at Maroun er Ras, a vast expanse of western Galilee - forested hills and belts of apple orchards - could be seen stretching away to the south. "I am lost for words," said Tarek, the 28-year-old owner of a laundry business in Beirut.

The atmosphere on the climb up the hill to Maroun er Ras was cheerful and friendly, almost like a picnic outing. Purpose on the southern side of the hill overlooking the border, the situation quickly grew tense. Hundreds of Palestinians scrambled down the rocky slope to reach the frontier fence. A crowd of some 300 to 400 reached the fence and began hurling stones at Israeli soldiers. Lebanese troops moved quickly, recognizing that perhaps a disaster could unfold if the thousands of Palestinians gathering on the hilltop could reach the fence. Troops fanned out along a dirt track about 400 yards from the border fence and forcefully prevented anyone from going further. Short sporadic bursts of machine gun fire echoed across the hillside as Israeli soldiers opened fire on the crowd at the fence. A steady trickle of casualties was ferried by stretcher from the fence to an awaiting fleet of ambulances.

One man writhed in pain on the ground as medics treated him. Another young man was shot in the thigh, blood seeping through the bandages. Another man appeared to have been shot in the stomach as he was helped into an ambulance by several men whose clothes were smeared with the victim's blood. (See pictures of young Palestinians in the age of the wall.)

"allah u-akbar" (God is great), intoned a solemn-looking man as he and other wide-eyed onlookers gazed at the casualties being treated on the ground. A forest of raised arms clutching camera-fitted cell phones recorded the scene.

As more were wounded, dozens more ambulances began to arrive on the scene. The silhouettes of Israeli troops could be spotted on the ramparts of a border outpost watching the protest. Inside the outpost, a tank revved its engines and emitted a thick cloud of smoke, partly obscuring the position. Other soldiers hurried along the border patrol road as showers of stones cascaded around them. Some Palestinians hunting for stones began straying perilously close to the minefields that Israel planted along most of the border inside Lebanon more than 30 years ago.

Checked by the thin line of Lebanese soldiers, Palestinian tempers frayed as the young men attempted to push through to reach the border. A group of Islamic Jihad supporters chanted "god is great" and "we will liberate Palestine with the Kalashnikov". Every few minutes, the surging crowd of Palestinians gained sufficient momentum to push past the angry Lebanese soldiers, cheering and whooping as they dashed toward the border fence to join their comrades. The scattered machine gun fire and casualties did little to deter the Palestinian demonstrators. If anything, each shooting appeared to galvanize them further. (See pictures of the flourishing Hizballah youth.)

The Israeli army said that the protests in south Lebanon and the Golan Heights boron the fingerprints of Iran and served Syria's interests. However, the Iran-backed Hizballah took a back seat at the Maroun er Ras demonstration, even though the village, scene of a key battle in the 2006 Israel-Hizballah war, staunchly supports the Shi'ite group. Hizballah men helped marshal the busloads of Palestinians, but Palestinian officials from Lebanon were clearly in charge of the event.

Still, agent provocateurs were not required to Burns Palestinian passions at Maroun er Ras. The presence of tens of thousands of dispossessed Palestinians standing on the edge of their former homeland on the emotional anniversary of the Nakba was more than enough to ignite tensions.

Before the 2006 war, Sunday's high casualty count almost certainly would have led to some form of military response by Hizballah. But Hizballah has remained quiet in the past five years, unwilling to goad Israel into another unwanted conflict. Less certain is the response of extremist Palestinian groups suspected of past rocket firings into Israel. UNIFIL and the Lebanese army were expected to expand their "rocket watch" patrols in the coming days to prevent the possibility of the deadly Nakba commemoration sparking a tit-for-tat escalation along the Lebanon-Israel border.