BEIRUT: Lebanese security forces stormed a building in the capital Beirut early Thursday following a shootout during the night with a man holed up inside a flat, an AFP correspondent at the site said.

The gunman was killed and the body of another man was found inside the flat located on the sixth floor of a building in west Beirut's Karakass district, a security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The spark for the shootout appears to have been a personal dispute between at least one of the men and a woman in her early 20s.

Both the gunman and the woman, who was detained in the incident, are Syrian nationals, the official said.

The army and police rushed to the site late Wednesday after reports of gunfire.

The man subsequently lobbed grenades and began shooting at the security forces from his flat. At least six police and army troops were wounded.

The military later found a large amount of weapons in the seventh-floor flat from where the gunman was shooting, it said in a statement.

Another gunman was also wounded, the statement noted, adding that he had previously been "detained for several years in Lebanon for security reasons," without elaborating.

The shootout came amid heightened tension in Lebanon, where deadly sectarian violence has taken place in the past two weeks linked to the unrest sweeping neighbouring Syria. AGENCIES