Lebanon: 'fate of the nation at stake' Other residents in Beirut reported seeing militia checkpoints. They were so aggressive. My friends had to prove they are Sunnis so that they would let us pass," said a French resident who encountered a checkpoint in south Beirut with her car full of Lebanese friends. It is as though Lebanon suffers from a reflex: whenever there is trouble, revert to the sectarian behaviour of the civil war in the 1980s. During that conflict, which raged from 1975 until 1990, whole cities were divided between rival militias and their checkpoints were often the setting for sectarian murders. In all, Monday's fighting claimed seven lives in Beirut and the northern city of Tripoli, where a nine-year-old girl was a shot by a sniper. Lebanon's armed forces responded by deploying thousands of troops in Beirut, blocking roads and cordoning off the most dangerous parts of the city. An official statement from the army, which warned of "unprecedented" tension, promised that rival militias would not be allowed to use Gen Hassan's assassination as a pretext to "murder a nation." The army urged the country's politicians to show restraint and choose their words carefully "because the fate of the nation is at stake." Snipers remained hidden in buildings yesterday, firing on their enemies in the streets around. Many doubt whether the national army, consisting of soldiers drawn from all of Lebanon's confessional groups, has the strength and the will to take on the rival militias. Hizbollah, the radical Shia movement and the biggest armed group of them all, is thought to have more weapons than the Lebanese armed forces. After his ordeal on Sunday night, Mr Baaklini drove to an army checkpoint only 200 metres from where the militiamen had opened fire on his car. They said they could do nothing. I told the soldier I would leave the country! The soldier said that if he had the means, he would too," said Mr Baaklini.