Rockets from Syria batter Hezbollah stronghold

BEIRUT -- Eighteen rockets and mortar rounds from Syria slammed into Lebanon on Saturday, the largest cross-border salvo to hit a Hezbollah stronghold since Syrian rebels threatened to retaliate for the Lebanese militant group's armed support of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The rockets targeted the Baalbek region, the latest sign that Syria's civil war is increasingly destabilizing Lebanon. On Friday, the Lebanese parliament decided to put off general elections, originally scheduled for June, by 17 months, blaming a deteriorating security situation in the country.

In Qatar, an influential Sunni Muslim cleric whose TV show is watched by millions across the region fanned the sectarian flames ignited by the Syria conflict and urged Sunnis everywhere to join the fight against Assad. In a rally for Syria's rebels later Friday, Yusuf al-Qardawi denounced Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam, as "more infidel than Christians and Jews" and Shia Muslim Hezbollah as "the party of the devil."

-- AP