Clashes continued for a fourth day on Wednesday between the residents of the neighborhood of Bab al-Tabbaneh, which supports the anti-government insurgency in Syria, and the adjacent neighborhood of Jabal Mohsen, which supports Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Large parts of the city of 500,000 people were shut down, with schools and shops closed after a night of fierce clashes, AFP reported.

Two Lebanese soldiers were among the dead and at least 10 of the wounded were military personnel deployed to try to calm the violence that broke out on Sunday.
 

Fighting on Tuesday alone killed five people, with the violence extending outside the usual flashpoint neighborhoods of Bab el-Tebbaneh and Jabal Mohsen.

Violence has regularly broken out in the city since the beginning of the western-backed insurgency in neighboring Syria.

Syria has been struggling with s Western-backed insurgency since March 2011which has left many people dead and forced many to leave the country to escape the war.

Syrian government says the bloody chaos is being charged from outside the country while the US, Israel, Qatar and some of their allies have been supporting the insurgents to topple the legitimate government of Bashar Assad.

A recent report by the Financial Times revealed that the Qatari government has spent some three billion dollars in the past two years to support the anti-government groups in Syria, which far exceeds what provided by any other government.