BEIRUT : The army deployed across much of Lebanon on Sunday after Hezbollah ceded control of west Beirut but clashes raged on in the north and in the Druze mountains as Arab foreign ministers held crisis talks.

Heavy machine-gun fire and loud explosions echoed through several villages in the district of Aley as Druze majority leader Walid Jumblatt urged his rival Talal Arslan, who is allied with the Hezbollah-led opposition, to place the area under army control.

"Civil peace and halting the destruction are paramount," Jumblatt told Lebanese television. He also asked his supporters to lay down their weapons.

Arslan also called on opposition fighters to halt the fighting .

Shortly after the appeals the army began deploying in the area.

Earlier on Sunday the army had moved into the northern city of Tripoli where fierce overnight sectarian clashes had left one woman dead at at least five wounded.

The capital Beirut was calm with Shiite Muslim militants who had been locked in deadly although one-sided clashes for four days with Sunni Muslim opponents having seemingly vanished from the streets.

However, some barricades put up by the Shiite militants remained and the road to Beirut's sole civilian airport was shut for the fifth straight day, reflecting a continuing civil disobedience campaign by the opposition.

The takeover of west Beirut was a dramatic display of Hezbollah's military might and marked a turning point in the group's long-running power struggle with the government.

Arab League foreign ministers meanwhile held emergency talks on Lebanon in Cairo in the absence of Syria's top diplomat, whose country has been blamed for the troubles

Djibouti's Foreign Minister Mahmud Ali Yussuf, who was chairing the session, told fellow ministers that "a number of steps and measures to resolve the situation in Lebanon have been put forward."

He urged the different factions in Lebanon to "exercise restraint and cooperate with Arab endeavours," stressing that an Arab plan to resolve the crisis "is the only initiative on the table."

That initiative calls for the election of Lebanese army chief General Michel Sleiman as president, the establishment of a national unity government and the drafting of a new electoral law.

The latest violence was sparked by a government crackdown on a telephone network run by Hezbollah and the sacking of the airport security chief over his alleged links to the militant group.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said the measures amounted to a declaration of war, with ensuing clashes leading to the opposition taking over large swathes of west Beirut and leaving nearly 40 dead across the country.

The opposition pulled back its militants from Beirut after the army revoked the government's decisions and deployed in the affected areas.

Many Lebanese, including cabinet ministers, observed a minute of silence on Sunday for the victims of the violence, heeding a call by embattled Prime Minister Fuad Siniora who described Hezbollah's power grab as an armed coup.

Syrian official daily Al-Baath said on Sunday that Hezbollah had foiled a US-planned coup to seize control of Lebanon.

"The Americans launched a pre-emptive strike against opposition nationalist forces, starting with the (Hezbollah) resistance, and attempted a Washington-planned coup but were taken aback by the opposition, which restored order in Lebanon," it said.

The White House welcomed the lessening of violence in Beirut but warned that "our concerns regarding Hezbollah are unchanged."

"They continue to be a destabilising force there with the backing of their supporters, Iran and Syria," US National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

Pope Benedict XVI condemned the sectarian fighting. "I beg the Lebanese to end clashes which are leading this country" to the point of no return, he said.

Amid the tensions, foreigners on Sunday continued to leave Lebanon by road to Syria, although the eastern border crossing of Masnaa was still blocked by pro-government supporters.

Lebanon's political standoff, which surfaced in November 2006 when six pro-Syrian ministers - all but one of them Shiites - quit the cabinet, has left it without a president since November, when Damascus protege Emile Lahoud stepped down.

The crisis is widely seen as an extension of the confrontation pitting the United States and its Arab allies against Syria and Iran. - AFP/de