Video Related To: Tension spreads to Assad's hometown

A sniper has killed a Sunni sheikh in the Lebanese city of Tripoli, sparking new clashes between pro- and anti-Syrian factions that dashed a tenuous truce, a security official has told the AFP news agency. The death of 28-year-old Sheikh Khaled al-Baradei on Friday brought to 17 the number of people killed in fighting in the city over the past five days and stoked fears of a spillover of major violence from the conflict in neighbouring Syria. A further 86 people have been wounded. The exchanges of rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire pitted anti-Syrian fighters from the Sunni Muslim Qobbeh district against those in support of Damascus from the neighbouring Alawite district of Jabal Mohsen. The intensity of the exchanges sparked large fires in the two neighbourhoods in the east of the Mediterranean port city, Lebanon's second largest. Al Jazeera's James Bays reporting from Tripoli on Friday said: "The authorities have been trying to contain this trouble for five days, but the killing of the sheikh could change this." Bays added that the situation is "getting worse" as the conflict spreads to other areas of the city with reports of shops being burned down. "Every time someone is killed -- and the death toll here continues to rise -- then that is just increasing the problems, there are more calls for revenge." Families hammered holes through the walls of their apartments to escape to safety down makeshift ladders as the clashes raged. Hundreds of soldiers with tanks <b>...</b>