By Tom Perry BEIRUT, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Photos of both Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri are pasted to the wall of a shop on the frontline of sectarian tensions in Beirut. The owner hopes that by displaying the symbols of rival camps in Lebanon's political struggle she can deflect questions on which she supports. "People come in and ask me which one I'm with. I tell them I'm with both," Nada Shbarro said. Her grocery lies on a main road in the Sunni Muslim district of Qasqas, loyal to Hariri's son and political heir Saad. Just down the road are the Shi'ite Muslim southern suburbs -- the Beirut heartland of Hezbollah. A Shi'ite returning from Hezbollah-led protests demanding the resignation of the Hariri-controlled government was shot dead in Qasqas on Sunday night. "Now it's not political. It's sectarian," Shbarro said. "People are only talking about divisions. It's all Sunnis and Shi'ites," she said. "I am a Sunni," she said pulling out her mobile phone to reveal a picture of Saad al-Hariri on the screen. "This is a Sunni area," she added, complaining that Shi'ites from the southern suburbs had been shouting obscenities at Sunnis while passing through Qasqas in recent days. "They come outside your house and curse you for one, two or three days. So what do you expect will happen?" she asked. "There is going to be a lot more. This story isn't over," answered a man standing in the shop. "My name is Omar. They have started cursing Omar," he said, in reference to a companion of the Prophet Mohammed held in high regard by Sunni Muslims. "From what we are hearing, it will get worse," he said. CALLS FOR CALM Leaders on both sides have issued calls for calm in the last two weeks when their followers' passions have spilled into the streets. At the same time, both sides blame the other for seeking to provoke violence. In the Shi'ite suburbs down the road from Qasqas, portrait photos of the young man shot dead on Sunday have been pasted to walls. "The Martyr Ahmed Mahmoud," the posters read. Like the Sunnis of Qasqas, the Shi'ites in the southern suburbs see attempts to provoke violence. They hold the government responsible for rising sectarian tension. "They are trying to create strife between Sunnis and Shi'ites so they can stay in power," said Ibrahim Dawoud, a young activist from the Shi'ite Amal Movement, which is allied to Hezbollah. "They won't drag us to sectarian war." "We are not going to let their project work," Raouf Darwish said. "Our leaders will not be dragged into this. If they hit us with bullets, we will throw flowers at them." But tempers could eventually fray, mechanic Hassan Ezzeddin said. "What happened yesterday can happen again. We are aware of the attempts to provoke us. The first, second or third time we can be disciplined. But then people will get angry."
