The blackened and smouldering remains of two rows of shops in the Ard Jalloul quarter of Beirut on Sunday served as a stark illustration both of the increasingly sectarian nature of the fighting in Lebanon and of the inability of the army to keep the peace.

On Saturday angry Sunni supporters of the government had burnt down the car repair shop of Hussein Sabbah “with him inside”, says Abu Rami, a local government supporter with something of a shrug.