Tensions high in Lebanon after assault on clerics

BEIRUT (AP) — Several hundred demonstrators angry over attacks against Sunni Muslim clerics blocked roads with garbage bins and burning tires in Beirut and other Lebanese cities on Monday, enflaming old tensions already boiling over the conflict in Syria.

The country is sharply split along sectarian lines, and the civil war next door has exacerbated those divisions among supporters and opponents of President Bashar Assad. The split is a legacy of the nearly three decades when Damascus all but ruled Lebanon, until 2005.