BEIRUT: Street battles in Beirut during the night between groups for and against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's embattled regime left two people dead, Lebanon's state-run news agency said on Monday.

The fighting, which also wounded 18 people, erupted soon after reports emerged that army troops had shot dead an anti-Syria Sunni cleric when his convoy failed to stop at a checkpoint in north Lebanon on Sunday.

The cleric's killing followed a week of intermittent clashes in the northern port city of Tripoli between Sunnis hostile to the Syrian regime and Alawites who support Assad.