BEIRUT, May 11: Lebanon’s factional violence spread to the mountains around Beirut on Sunday where gunmen from the Hezbollah movement battled Druze supporters of the ruling coalition.The fighting in Aley, a town in the mountains overlooking Beirut, and nearby villages killed at least eight people.

Hezbollah and its allies have in recent days routed pro-government gunmen in Beirut in Lebanon’s worst civil strife since the 1975-1990 civil war.

The campaign led by Hezbollah, backed by Syria and Iran, has increased pressure on the governing coalition, which is supported by the United States and Saudi Arabia, to accept the opposition’s terms for ending 18 months of political conflict.

Hezbollah and allied Druze fighters took control of several villages in the Aley area on Sunday, security sources said.

Explosions and gunfire echoed across the pine-covered hills.

The clashes brought the death toll in five days of fighting across Lebanon to 53. At least 150 have been wounded.

Fighting eased and the army began to deploy after Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, whose supporters were fighting the Hezbollah militia, asked a rival Druze leader allied to the Hezbollah group to mediate an end to the fighting.

“I tell my supporters that civil peace, coexistence and stopping war and destruction are more important than any other consideration,” Jumblatt, a pillar of the US-backed governing coalition, said in an appeal on LBC television.

Jumblatt’s call for rival Druze leader Talal Arsalan to mediate was a sign of how big a blow the coalition has been dealt by the Hezbollah, a political group with a powerful guerrilla army.

The clashes followed allegations by the Hezbollah on Saturday that Jumblatt loyalists killed two of its members. It also held Jumblatt responsible for the safe return of a third member who was missing.

The Arab League, which held an emergency session in Cairo on Sunday, said it would send a delegation headed by Secretary-General Amr Moussa and the prime minister of Qatar to Beirut immediately to try to mediate an end to the fighting.—Reuters