90% reservations cancelled

Fadi Abboud Beirut - Somayya Mahmoud Lebanese Tourism Minister Fadi Abboud has said the recent violence in the country's north has greatly affected tourism in Lebanon. "Events over the last two days have led to 90 percent of reservations being cancelled in Lebanon," he said. At least eight people have been killed in clashes between rival pro- and anti-Damascus gunmen from Sunni and Alawite groups, whose rival districts are symbolically divided by a thoroughfare called Syria Street. The fighting has rattled the already fragile security situation in Lebanon, which lived under three decades of Syrian domination and remains deeply divided between supporters and opponents of the Damascus government.The dead included a 13-year-old boy, while another 75 people have been wounded, including a boy of six who was paralysed by a gunshot wound and 15 soldiers, security sources said. The fighting first erupted late Monday in Tripoli, home to a Sunni community hostile to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam to which the leader belongs. The violence in Tripoli, Lebanon's second largest city, saw machineguns and anti-tank rockets fired. At a summer exhibition held in Kfardebian gardens in Chouf on Tuesday, Abboud said: "We must compensate our losses through Arab and Lebanese expatriate tourists who insist on visiting the nation of their ancestors, Lebanon". "A second summer tourist season was expected during and after the Eid al-Fitr holiday, but most reservations have been cancelled as the tourism situation is very critical. I hope everything returns to normal soon," he said. "We should review the new tourism map, through offering different kinds of tourists, using expatriates amounting to over 90 million Lebanese. Today, we are paying the price for our wrong policy, despite Lebanon entering the world of globalisation has opened up to other countries," he added.