The town of Chouweifat is strategically placed overlooking Beirut’s airport. Its population is predominantly from Lebanon’s minority Druze community and its buildings on Monday bore the scars of Sunday’s violent sectarian clashes – by far the bloodiest in the five days of violence that has now claimed more than 80 lives.

Fighters belonging to Lebanon’s opposition, largely relying on the battle-hardened units of the Shia Hizbollah movement, had the upper hand in Chouweifat, as they had last week in Beirut when they overran government supporters in the west of the capital in a matter of hours.