A series of fatal shootings in Tripoli claimed five lives in separate incidents, each triggered by minor quarrels that escalated to gunfire in the city's deteriorating security climate.
Tripoli has become a city where death arrives casually, reduced to three repeated phrases: shot by accident, random gunfire, perpetrators fled to unknown locations. In recent years the city has descended into such lawlessness that a man may kill another man, a child, or a worker he does not know simply because his mood is foul or for reasons that encourage him to fire on strangers and then vanish into the city's ungoverned streets. Five such killings have marked the descent.
Shadi died over a dispute about roasted chicken. His father Youssef took him to a shop selling grilled birds near the Muezzin call to prayer. They stood buying fowl when the shop owner placed cardboard egg crates on the floor between father and son. Youssef bent his head to ask his boy if he wanted a crate. Gunfire cut through his words. A man fired a military pistol at the shop after insisting on half a roasted chicken despite the owner saying stock had run out. The bullet lodged in Shadi's skull. A second young man, identified as M.T., was shot in the hand. Shadi had worked at his father's falafel stall on Matar Street since he was five years old. By eleven he could manage all orders alone. His father said the entire street loved him. He was not just my son, but my brother, my friend, my father. Two minutes after they arrived at the roasted chicken shop, he was dead.
The morning of the shooting, Youssef sensed something was wrong and told Shadi not to come to the market. But around four o'clock, Shadi called repeatedly. His father relented and allowed him to go. They walked together for the last time through Tripoli's markets. A girl had been standing next to his son at the shop. If the bullet had not hit my child it would have killed her, Youssef said. What was her sin? What was my son's sin? Why were my wife, his sisters, and I robbed of him?
Ahmad al-Misol was eleven years old when a man named Ahmad Hassan al-Masri was cursed by someone unknown. The insult enraged him. He resolved to kill his insulter but could not find him. His rage mounting, he fired at Ahmad al-Misol and his cousins without prior knowledge of any of them. Issa al-Misol, Ahmad's cousin, was present when the shooting began. We were deciding which restaurant to go to eat at, he said. Suddenly there was heavy gunfire. The sound grew closer. We stood and did not know where to go. A motorcycle with two men pulled up. The one with the gun was not looking at us. He was looking at the other street. Then he saw us. He turned his weapon on us and fired.
As Issa ran toward the market to seek help, Ahmad looked at him and said, your face is covered in blood, and my stomach is hurting very badly. Issa had been hit multiple times: one bullet struck his neck without detonating; another detonated beside it, leaving shrapnel in his face and neck. A third detonated near his side. Two bullets lodged in his left foot and three in his right, one of them passing through bone. He spent three days in the hospital. Ahmad did not survive.
Ahmad's mother, Huda Hamoud, learned of her son's death from Facebook. The Tripoli News Network had posted his photograph and written that he had died from a military bullet. Huda asked the question that Youssef asked too: what was my son's sin, that he should die without goodbye? His father was serving the nation in military service. His son was dead on the ground in a nation where weapons run free. What torments me most is how much my child suffered when the bullet exploded in his stomach. How angry he was that he could not say goodbye to me and his father and his siblings. Why did my son become nothing but a picture on a wall in Tripoli, burning with the city and its blood? Ahmad loved the football club al-Shaqura because their players had blond hair and were handsome, his mother said. He was athletic, playing both football and boxing, winning championships in both sports. He was a secondary school student who dreamed of graduating with high marks so he could join the military academy and become an officer in the army. Now he will not.
Abu al-Abd sold cheese cakes at a stall in the gold market for thirty years, always in the same spot, known and loved throughout the neighborhood. His sole income kept his mother fed and provided his livelihood. During a clash between gunmen, a stray bullet struck him in the head. His son Abd al-Sattar heard heavy gunfire and ran to his balcony. His father was lying on the ground. I was the one who carried him to my car and rushed him to the hospital, Abd al-Sattar said. I immediately drove to Haykal Hospital. By morning, God had taken him. To this day I cannot accept my father's death. They killed him while he stood selling at his stall, directly beneath his home.
A quarrel inside a cafe near Houz Mall in Dhahr al-Ain escalated into gunfire. A man named Khaled al-Mohamad had rented and was running the cafe. Following earlier disputes, he arrived with three friends and began smashing the place to pieces. Abu Leila, who worked as a guard at Houz Mall, mounted his motorcycle and rode toward the cafe. He was met by two men on a motorcycle in the middle of the street. One pulled a gun and fired directly at Abu Leila. He died, leaving behind three children, the oldest now eight years old. His brother said to the outlet: this was his only job. He worked to meet his family's needs. His children need him. How are we to explain this to them?
The family was not expecting the news. Abu Leila's absence broke them. Someone knocked on the door at two in the morning and said your brother was shot in the stomach. I went straight to Haykal Hospital. By dawn, God had taken him. But to this day I cannot accept my brother's death. The killer says he only meant to scare him. But he did not scare my brother. He killed him. He killed him.
Iyad Raad fired random bullets at a cafe in al-Tal near the municipality building over a prior dispute with one of the shop owners. One shot hit a worker's foot. Raad mounted his motorcycle, rode twenty-five meters away, then returned with his weapon raised along the street where Abd al-Rahman al-Omr was walking. According to the family, al-Omr was with his wife and their ten-month-old daughter. His brother said: my brother was going to the market to buy baby formula for his daughter. My mother was preparing food so we could all eat lunch together. The family walked three shops' distance before the shooting began.
These deaths carry no political consequence and produce no named suspect brought to justice. They arrive in Tripoli as routine tragedy, each victim compressed into the same three phrases that precede every killing in the city: accident, random fire, perpetrators unknown. That Shadi was eleven, that Ahmad dreamed of the military academy, that Abu al-Abd had worked the same stall for thirty years, that Abu Leila left three children and a wife, that Abd al-Rahman was buying formula for an infant, these details vanish into the arithmetic of Tripoli's collapse. The security apparatus offers neither investigation nor consequence. The pattern endures because nothing stops it.
