Conflict Incident Report

Officials in the village of Aqoura in rural Jbeil have called on security forces to intervene “before it’s too late” in a protracted land dispute with a neighboring village.
Around 30 men armed with machine guns from Baalbeck’s Yammouneh village fired toward an Aqoura police patrol Tuesday evening without causing injuries, Aqoura Mayor Mansour Wehbe said at a news conference Wednesday that was attended by Kesrouan MP Chamel Roukoz and Jbeil MP Ziad Hawat.
The armed men, said to be from the Al-Sharif family, then ordered the police officers to step out of their cars, confiscated their phones and threatened them, according to Wehbe.
The two villages, which straddle the provincial borders of Jbeil and Baalbek, have been locked in a dispute over a piece of land that separates them. The issue was resolved in 1967 through a court ruling that defined and demarcated the municipal borders.
But tensions have recently intensified following a string of security incidents that required the intervention of the Internal Security Forces and the Lebanese Army on a number of occasions.