Tripoli

The BBC and other new outlets are carrying reports that the violence in Lebanon has now spread north to Lebanon's second city Tripoli.

When I visited Tripoli a few years back it seemed a far more radical place than Beirut. Indeed the couple who took us there had lived in Tripoli until someone put a bomb outside their house and tried to blow them up.

When in Tripoli we overlooked the city from the walls of the citadel of Raymond de Saint-Gillies. We prayed and as we did so a flock of white doves took off from some rooftops and circled in the sky - a sign of peace? We prayed that it would be a sign of peace, of a lasting peace - still we pray for what else can we do?