Hezbollah Offensive in the Battle for Beirut

The unrest began on Tuesday when the Lebanese government accused Hezbollah of carrying out intelligence surveillance at the Beirut airport, then challenged Hezbollah's private telecommunications network.

"The government wanted to dismantle the fiber optic communications network that Hezbollah has built up over the past several years around Beirut and in other parts of the country," Bazzi explained.

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"It's a private communications network that Hezbollah built up, a secure network so that their leadership could communicate with each other, something that they used quite a bit during the summer 2006 war with Israel."

Hezbollah's leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, defended the communications network as a strategic asset he was unwilling to give up.

From Tuesday's confrontation grew a wider battle of words and gunfire. By Wednesday a pre-planned labor strike protesting economic policy turned into a large-scale anti-government demonstration. Supporters on both sides set up road blocks, shutting down the Beirut airport. On Thursday afternoon Nasrallah gave a speech calling the government's challenge to the communications network "a declaration of war."

Lebanese government leader Saad Hariri, head of the Sunni Future Party, offered a truce on condition that Hezbollah put down its weapons and agree to elect a consensus candidate as Lebanon's next president. Hezbollah rejected the offer and by the end of Friday succeeded in taking control of most of western Beirut.

Fighters of Hariri's Future movement have now left the streets. A television and radio station tied to the movement were closed after the building was set ablaze.

The week's battles were a show of force reminiscent of Lebanon's 15-year civil war, during which armed militias from each religious community engaged in regular street fights.

Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war left 150,000 dead and much of the city devastated and carved into warring sectarian enclaves.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to the reporting of this story.