Four people were killed in Tripoli yesterday in exchanges of fire between neighbourhoods that support rival sides in Syria's civil war.

The dead - including a teenage boy and a man in his 30s - were from the Sunni Bab al-Tabbaneh district, whose residents overwhelmingly support the Sunnis battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Thirty people, including five soldiers, were wounded in the shooting between the district and the adjacent Alawite neighbourhood of Jebel Mohsen, which supports the Alawite Syrian leader.