Blasts of gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades quieted down on Friday, as the army and police forces took up positions in areas seized by opposition militants following battles that left at least 11 people dead and dozens of others injured since clashes erupted on Wednesday.
Security sources in Beirut said the fighting had ended "because no one is standing in the way of the opposition forces," after militants from the Shiite Hezbollah and Amal groups defeated gunmen loyal to the pro-government Future bloc, led by Sunni MP Saad Hariri.
The opposition also forced the shutdown of media owned by Hariri's family, Future TV and Al-Mustaqbal newspaper, and seized Future's offices across the city. An old Future TV studio, located near the Saudi embassy, was set ablaze.
Opposition militants claimed victory, as convoys of vehicles carrying gunmen took to the otherwise empty streets of the capital, firing celebratory shots in the air and flashing the victory sign, according to news wires and media footage.
Christian leader and Hezbollah ally, former army Gen. Michel Aoun, welcomed the opposition's triumph as a "victory for Lebanon," and vowed that life in Beirut would be restored to normality.
Some Lebanese commentators compared the opposition gunmen's fighting, takeovers and victory celebrations to the Palestinian Hamas' violent conquest of Gaza in June last year, in which the Islamist movement forced out the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority from the strip.
But unlike Hamas in Gaza, the Lebanese opposition fighters handed over the offices and areas they seized to the Lebanese army, in what analysts say was a clear attempt to ease fears among west Beirut's mainly Sunni residents, who feared a "Shiite invasion" of their city.
"The army is in control of institutions placed under its authority, such as the media outlets of the Future Movement," the army said in a statement. "It also controls the area around the government headquarters, the central bank, major roads and the area where Hariri and [Walid] Jumblatt's residents are located."
MP Jumblatt, a Druze leader of the Progressive Socialist Party allied with the anti-Syrian March 14 coalition that supports the government, left his home in the Chouf Mountains in the past two days and took up residence in Beirut because, as he said, "no one party can control" the capital.
The violence was unleashed after the pro-Western government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora on Tuesday declared Hezbollah's telecommunications network illegal and dismissed the head of airport security for his alleged sympathies to the organization.
Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah on Thursday insisted that the government's decisions were a "declaration of war" against his movement and the anti-Israeli resistance.
Nasrallah, in a news conference via satellite in Beirut, vowed that while Hezbollah would not turn its weapons against other Lebanese, the organization would not hesitate to use weapons to defend itself and its right to keep these weapons.
He also stressed that the fight was not sectarian, but a clash between a government serving American-Israeli interests and a "national movement" protecting the country's higher interests from the "American-Zionist" projects in the region.
The Hezbollah chief said the only way to resolve the crisis was for the government, which the opposition disregards as illegitimate, to revoke its most recent decisions and for the rivals to enter into dialogue.
Hariri later made a televised appeal to pull the militias from the streets, elect army chief Gen. Michel Suleiman as president and then sit at the negotiating table; an offer which the opposition quickly rejected.
Lebanon was plunged into its worst crisis since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war in February 2005 with the assassination of Hariri's father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
The country has been without a president since November, as the rival camps bicker over the form of the next government before parliament elects a head of state.
Meanwhile, while the army effectively took control of west Beirut, its chief maintained the military's neutrality by ordering his troops to not engage in the fighting, other than to try to stop the clashes.
Analysts say Gen. Suleiman could not have played it any other way if he wanted to maintain the army's unity and credibility as the only non-politicized institution supported by the feuding factions.
They add that Suleiman's unbiased command in the past three days gives him more weight as the "consensus presidential candidate," hoping it would speed up his election.
However, Lebanese politicians agree that the crisis can only be resolved if the United States and its Arab allies – which support the government – resolve their larger regional disputes with the opposition's backers: Syria and Iran.
Riyadh and Cairo are seeking an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers to find ways to resolve the crisis before Lebanon becomes another Gaza, as one analyst put it.