Lebanese troops seize area by restive border town

Forces have recapture a post they lost when Islamist extremists overran the town of Arsal last month amid raging anger over the beheading of soldiers and captivity of troops and police officers.

As Staffan de Mistura, the UN's new special envoy to Syria, began his first visit to Damascus, attacks by Syrian regime forces killed over 10 people and wounded dozens more, including this man waitingShow more

BEIRUT // Lebanese troops have advanced near Syria, almost separating a border town from rebel-held areas in nearby fields.

A military official and the state-run National News Agency (NNA) said that troops captured a post they lost when Islamist extremists overran the town of Arsal last month, killing and capturing a number of soldiers and police officers.

The military official, said “90 per cent” of the area between the town of Arsal and its rebel-held outskirts that stretches to Syria is now held by troops.

“Arsal is a Lebanese town and the terrorists are now on the outskirts,” the official said by telephone.

The latest round of fighting that began on Monday came as anger swelled in Lebanon over the continued captivity of the soldiers and police officers.

Over the past days, images emerged showing that militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group beheaded a second captive Lebanese soldier.

Militants in Syria, including ISIL, are holding about 20 soldiers and police officers. They were seized after militants briefly overran Arsal, the most serious spillover yet of Syria’s conflict into the neighbouring country.

Relatives of the missing soldiers and policemen have blocked roads in protest and even carried out counter-kidnaps.

On Monday, a security source said two people from majority Sunni Arsal had been kidnapped by the family of soldier Ali Al Masri.

One of the negotiators involved in the talks aimed at solving the hostage crisis confirmed the report: “The family is asking the people of Arsal to pressure the [militant] kidnappers to release their son, and it insists it will not release its hostages until [the soldiers] are free.”

Elsewhere in the majority Shiite Bekaa valley, tit-for-tat kidnappings took place on Monday, according to security sources, who said the army was trying to resolve the spiralling crisis.

The hostage crisis and beheadings have inflamed tensions in Lebanon, which is hosting more than 1.1 million Syrian refugees, and where tensions were already soaring over the four-year conflict in Syria.

The crisis has prompted a backlash against Syrian refugees in parts of Lebanon, with tents in informal camps being set alight and hundreds of Syrians sheltered in the Bekaa valley fleeing for fear of attack.

The Syrian conflict has exacerbated existing sectarian tensions in Lebanon, where most Sunni residents back the Syrian uprising and Shiites generally support Syria’s president Bashar Al Assad.

The August fighting in Arsal was the most serious border incident in Lebanon since the Syrian war began next door in March 2011.

With the ensuing hostage crisis unresolved to date despite ongoing Qatari mediation, reports of the soldier’s beheading first emerged on Saturday, prompting angry Lebanese to cut roads with burning tyres in protest.

The NNA meanwhile reported that refugees in several camps across the country – especially those in Shiite areas whose residents support Al Assad ally Hizbollah – had been told to leave their tents.

In the eastern Bekaa valley Syrian refugees were seen dismantling their tents and leave in their thousands for northern Lebanon, the west of the Bekaa and Beirut.

Incidents of violence targeting Syrians have also been reported.

George Ghattas, a farmer from the village of Taybeh in the Bekaa valley, said he saw a group of men attacking the Syrian guard of an unfinished construction site.

“The man then fled,” Mr Ghattas said.

In southern Lebanon, Syrian refugees hosted in about 100 tents near the city of Tyre were given 48 hours to leave their camp.

“We don’t want to have terror cells developing in big camps,” Burj Al Shimali’s mayor Ali Deeb said. “We have given the Syrians living in the camp 48 hours to leave.”

Meanwhile, the new United Nations special envoy to Syria began his first visit to Damascus yesterday to try end the deadly three-year conflict, while mortar attacks on the capital and a suburb killed at least five people, state news agency Sana said.

Staffan de Mistura arrived in Damascus in the afternoon after crossing by land from neighbouring Lebanon. He is accompanied by his deputy Ramzy Ezzedine Ramzy. Both assumed their functions at the beginning of the month.

* Associated Press and Agence France-Presse