A Japanese bank has halted transactions by the Iranian government after a US court ordered a $2.6 billion asset freeze over the 1983 bombing of US barracks in Beirut, a bank spokesman said on Thursday.

At least four people were wounded on Wednesday in clashes between the army and residents of two areas of Lebanon's city of Tripoli supporting opposite sides in the crisis in neighbouring Syria, a security official said.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria's state media is fighting hard to cast the country's unrest as an Islamist terrorist conspiracy rather than a popular uprising against the dynastic rule of President Bashar al-Assad. State television airs interviews with men confessing to acts of violence, sullying the image of Assad's opponents. But the interviews are mocked by many Syrians and an ex-producer says that many confessions are bogus. ...

TRIPOLI, Lebanon (Reuters) - As armored vehicles rumble past bullet-scarred streets, Lebanese men heckle soldiers they have now added to their list of enemies: "There go the traitors!" In Lebanon's northern city of Tripoli, the army may have halted three days of bloody clashes kindled by unrest in Syria next door, but anger is still festering. Subdued street fighters hardly disguise their rage towards the state for stopping them. ...

BEIRUT (Reuters) - At least 21 people were killed on Tuesday in an attack in northern Syria, activists said, and members of a team of U.N. monitors caught in the incident said they were in rebel hands "for their own protection." When Reuters asked one of the four monitors by phone if they were being held prisoner, he said: "We are safe with the (rebel) Free Army." A spokesman for the rebel military council said the rebels were working on a safe exit for the monitors. An internal U.N. ...

Deadly sectarian clashes linked to the unrest in Syria may have ended for now in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, but residents warn that violence is bound to boil over again.