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It was the first attack to apparently target Hezbollah's stronghold in the south of the Lebanese capital since the outbreak of the two-year conflict in neighbouring Syria, which has heightened Lebanon's own sectarian tensions.

The rocket strikes came hours after the Hezbollah leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, a powerful supporter of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, said his fighters were committed to the conflict whatever the cost.

Syria's two-year uprising has polarised Lebanon, with Sunni Muslims supporting the rebellion against Assad and Shia Hezbollah and its allies standing by Assad. The Lebanese city of Tripoli has seen frequent explosions of violence between majority Sunnis and its small Alawite community.

Foreign policy analysts usually tend to explain Moscow's inflexible stance on Syria by evoking arms sales to Damascus (Bashar al-Assad's regime is said to have placed orders for Russian hardware to the tune of $3.5bn) and the Russian naval station in the Syrian port of Tartous. But this alone does not account for Russia's seeming indifference to the adverse effect that its international advocacy of the Assad government has on its relations with the United States, the European Union and the majority of the Arab states. The explanation has a lot to do with Russia's domestic policies and the obsessions of the Russian political class. By standing up for Damascus, the Kremlin is telling the world that neither the UN, nor any other body or group of countries has the right to decide who should or should not govern a sovereign state.

Ever since the fall of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, but especially after the 2004 "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine, the Russian leadership has been obsessed with the idea of America and the EU engineering the overthrow of governments that, for whatever reason, they find unsuitable.

Ever since the Nato operation against former Yugoslavia in 1999, Moscow has deeply mistrusted Western humanitarian rhetoric and sees it as nothing but a camouflage for a policy of regime change.

Iran's president Mahmoud Amadinejad has emphasised his country's "deep" ties with Syria during a meeting with President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus.During his trip Mr Ahmadinejad called for America and Israel to be cleared from the Arab world. The trip comes just days after the appointment of an new US ambassador to Syria, which had been seen as an improvement in the countries' ties.

on Thursday President Assad said he would not "distance" Syria from Iran. "I am surprised by their call to keep a distance between the countries when they raise the issue of stability and peace in the Middle East, and all the other beautiful principles," he said. He also defended Iran's right to enrich uranium, which has brought the country into conflict with the US and Europe.

US President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorising US support for rebels seeking to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government, Reuters news agency said quoting sources familiar with the matter.

The White House has apparently stopped short of giving the rebels lethal weapons, even as some US allies have been doing just that.

A US government source acknowledged that under provisions of the presidential finding, the US was collaborating with a secret command centre operated by Turkey and its allies.