Hezbollah says Lebanese government has declared war

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Thursday that the Lebanese government had declared war on his Shiite militant group by declaring its private telecommunications network an illegal threat to state security.

Nasrallah vowed to fight any attempts to disarm Hezbollah in a speech that hiked tensions already running high after a long-simmering political crisis between the Hezbollah-led opposition and the government erupted into sectarian violence.

"Those who try to arrest us, we will arrest them," he said. "Those who shoot at us, we will shoot at them. The hand raised against us, we will cut it off."

Celebratory gunfire rang out in Beirut as Nasrallah spoke live on television by videolink from a hiding place. The Hezbollah leader rarely appears in public for fear of assassination by Israel.

Lebanon's U.S.-backed government also said Tuesday that it would dismiss the security chief of the country's only international airport because he was suspected of ties to Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah.

Those decisions sparked sectarian clashes between supporters of Hezbollah and the government over the past two days. The violence emerged out of a long-simmering power struggle between the Hezbollah-led opposition and the Western-backed government for control of the country.

"The decision is tantamount to a declaration of war ... on the resistance and its weapons in the interest of America and Israel," Nasrallah said.

He offered a way out of the latest crisis, saying the "illegitimate" government must revoke its decisions against Hezbollah.

Hezbollah runs its own secure network of primitive private land lines. Nasrallah claimed the network helped the guerrillas fight Israel's high-tech army in the 2006 summer war.

He said the telecommunications network was "the most important part of the weapons of the resistance" and added Hezbollah had a duty to defend those weapons.

He and other Hezbollah leaders have suggested they are regularly targeted by Israel and they need secure communications.

"I am not declaring war. I am declaring a decision of self-defense," he said. The government has "crossed all the red lines. We will not be lenient with anyone."

He said Maj. Gen. Wafiq Shukeir, the airport security chief that the government decided to remove, will stay in his post, rejecting any replacement.

The government's decision to replace him came after pro-government leader Walid Jumblatt alleged Hezbollah had set up cameras near the airport _ which is located in the Hezbollah stronghold of south Beirut _ to monitor the movement of anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians and foreign dignitaries. Jumblatt suggested Hezbollah was planning to bomb aircraft to assassinate such figures.

Nasrallah rejected accusations by pro-government groups that Hezbollah was bent on staging a coup.