Syria Massacre: Violence Spills Into Neighboring Lebanon

WORLD -- May 28, 2012 at 5:54 PM EDT

Syria Massacre: Violence Spills Into Neighboring Lebanon

A massacre of more than 100 people in Houla, Syria, over the weekend is causing violence to spike in Lebanon, where Time magazine's Rania Abouzeid is reporting. She described this and other fallout from the fighting to Ray Suarez on Monday.

The conflict in Syria has spurred sectarian violence between Sunni and Alawite neighborhoods in Tripoli, and now Beirut, Lebanon -- a country that's been strained for years between pro- and anti-Syrian groups, said Abouzeid.

Recent running gun battles in parts of Tripoli are provoking "a very real sense that this time it might be more than just ... a simple burst of violence that can be easily subdued," she said.

Despite the chaos and lower-level defections within state institutions in Syria, the upper levels of those institutions remain intact -- a testament to how President Bashar al-Assad and his father were able to build up a formidable security apparatus over the years, she continued.

"It's quite a formidable regime, quite a formidable apparatus to try to pull apart," she said.

We'll have more on the violence in Syria, including a report from Alex Thomson of Independent Television News from Homs, on Monday's NewsHour. View all of our World coverage and follow us on Twitter.

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