BEIRUT: The Lebanese Army sealed off Beirut’s parliamentary district with razor wire and threatened stern action against violence yesterday after a night of unrest stoked by the war in Syria and political paralysis at home.

Around 100 protesters, angered by the postponement of June’s parliamentary election until next year, scuffled with police on Thursday night near Parliament. Twenty camped out overnight outside the ring of barbed wire, vowing to maintain the protest.

As the largely peaceful demonstration unfolded in central Beirut, protesters blocked roads with burning tires elsewhere in the capital and in Bekaa Valley towns in eastern Lebanon.

Demonstrators said they were acting in solidarity with residents of the Sunni Bekaa town of Arsal, which they say has been cut off by security forces investigating the shooting of four Shiite men on Sunday.

Sectarian violence has intensified in the Bekaa region because of the conflict raging across the border in Syria, where Lebanon’s Shiite militia Hezbollah and Lebanese Sunni gunmen have joined opposing sides of the 27-month-old civil war.

The army said several military posts and patrols were targeted on Thursday night by protesters, some of them armed, and four soldiers were wounded in exchanges of gunfire.

Security sources said at least two demonstrators were hurt in a protest near the main border crossing with Syria at Masnaa.

“The army leadership again urges citizens to be calm and not to follow rumors and sectarian emotions,” the military said in a statement. “It will not be lenient in confronting with force any outlaws or those who harm the armed forces.”

The statement said gunmen fired on army posts in three towns close to the Masnaa crossing early yesterday. The army returned fire and arrested 22 suspects in raids following the incidents.

Army commander Gen. Jean Kahwaji was quoted by the local As-Safir newspaper as saying the military would not tolerate any threats to Lebanon’s security during what he described as “very critical and very difficult” times.

“We called for a protest yesterday against the extension and against the violation on Lebanon’s democracy,” protester Marwan Maalouf said. “This is a new coup against the republic.

“Security forces used force against the protesters so we decided to set up tents here in a peaceful way to protest the extension. There is a year and a half, we won’t let them rest.”