evidence: Tension between Amal and Hezbollah degenerated into unprecedented bloody confrontations in April 1988 when Amal managed to drive Hezbollah out of much of southern Lebanon except for a few pockets in the mountainous region of Iqlim At-Tuffah. The following month, Hezbollah hit back by wrestling control of most neighbourhoods in Beirut’s densely populated southern suburbs from Amal. The major theatre of combat then shifted to Iqlim At-Tuffah where both groups fought bitterly in January 1989 as Hezbollah tried hard to restore its positions in the south from where it could engage Israeli occupation troops. Guns fell silent in the aftermath of the Damascus Agreement reached at the end of the month, but battles escalated again after Lebanese MPs signed the Taif peace deal in October 1989 to end the civil war. Fighting broke out in December 1989 in Western Bekaa and spread again to Iqlim At-Tuffah where it continued on an intermittent scale throughout much of 1990.