BEIRUT, Lebanon: The Higher Shiite Islamic Council denounced the "crime" committed against demonstrators who were staging "legal and peaceful" protests in Shiyyah.

Unidentified snipers fired at protesters and army troops last Sunday afternoon at the Mar Mikhael intersection in Shiyyah. At least eight people were killed and about 22 others wounded.

Sunday's protests began in the Mar Mikhael area of southern Beirut, near the site of the massacre of Palestinians that triggered Lebanon's1975-1990 Civil War.

In a statement issued after an extraordinary session, the council said: "what has been committed against some of our children is unbearable."

The council's statement added that "peaceful and legal activities ... should not be confronted with live bullets, violence and killing … The brutality of the sinful aggression and ... crime committed against the southern suburbs was beyond imagination."

It warned that the "the political future hinges on the level of serious and responsible handling of the crime and the culprits."

The council is "keen on [preserving] the army's role in safeguarding security and stability and defending the homeland and advises the army command to be vigilant regarding attempts to lure it into conflicts with those who had defended and protected it," the statement said.

The statement also urged the army command to "shoulder its responsibility by speeding up the investigations aimed at detecting those who opened fire at unarmed civilians."
Vice president of the council, Sheikh Abdel-Amir Qabalan, urged the army to conduct a "quick but not hasty investigation into Sunday's riots."