(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-05-12 15:01

BEIRUT - The army deployed across much of Lebanon on Sunday after Hezbollah ceded control of west Beirut but clashes raged on in the north and in the Druze mountains as Arab foreign ministers held crisis talks.

Smoke rises from Alley area during clashes between Hezbollah gunmen and Druze pro-government fighters in Mount Lebanon May 11, 2008. [Agencies]

Heavy machine-gun fire and loud explosions echoed through a number of villages in the district of Aley as Druze majority leader Walid Jumblatt urged his rival Talal Arslan, who is allied with the Hezbollah-led opposition, to place the area under army control.

"Civil peace and halting the destruction are paramount," Jumblatt told Lebanese television. He also asked his supporters to lay down their weapons.

Arslan also called on opposition fighters to halt the fighting .

Shortly after the appeals the army began deploying in the area.

A security official told AFP that the casualty toll from five days of fighting that have raised the spectre of renewed civil war now totals 42 dead and 164 wounded.

Earlier on Sunday the army moved into the main northern city of Tripoli where fierce sectarian clashes left one woman dead and at least five people wounded overnight.

Calm returned to the capital Beirut after four days of deadly violence between Shiite militants of Hezbollah and their pro-government Sunni opponents.

However, some barricades put up by Hezbollah remained in place and the road to Beirut airport was shut for a fifth straight day, in the face of a continuing civil disobedience campaign by the opposition.

The takeover of west Beirut was a dramatic display of Hezbollah's military might and marked a turning point in the opposition group's long-running power struggle with the government.

The Future Movement of Sunni Prime Minister Fuad Siniora accused its opponents of launching a "jihad" (Muslim holy war) on the Lebanese capital and of trying to "turn Beirut into another Baghdad," in an allusion to the sectarian killing that has gripped the Iraqi capital.

Arab League foreign ministers meanwhile held emergency talks on Lebanon in Cairo in the absence of Syria's top diplomat, whose country has been blamed for the troubles.

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