Stronghold of Hezbollah Is Attacked From Syria

By ANNE BARNARD and HALA DROUBI
Published: June 1, 2013

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Sixteen mortar shells and rockets fired from Syria crashed in a stronghold of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group, in eastern Lebanon on Friday night, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported on Saturday.

The agency reported no casualties, but said the rockets fell overnight on Baalbek, a Hezbollah town dominated mostly by Shiites with a sizable Sunni population and a smaller Christian one. The rockets set fields and bushes afire but avoided the city center.

The attacks came almost a week after Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, announced his military support for the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Syrian opposition groups, which aim to overthrow Mr. Assad, condemned Mr. Nasrallah’s stand and called for his fighters to withdraw from Syrian soil. Some rebel brigade leaders threatened to retaliate against Hezbollah directly.

Indiscriminate shelling has hit the smaller Shiite village of Hermel, in northeastern Lebanon, in recent weeks, killing several civilians. But Friday night’s rockets could be the most provocative yet, hitting a major population center in the northeastern Bekaa Valley. Baalbek is apparently the furthest south in the Bekaa that shells from Syria targeting Hezbollah areas have reached.

Baalbek is home to one of Lebanon’s most important archaeological sites and tourist destinations, the Baalbek ruins, which include a pre-Hellenic temple and later Roman structures. It is also the site of an annual summer music festival that draws people from all over the region. Unrest in the Bekaa Valley would further hurt the Lebanese tourist and agricultural economies, which have already been devastated by the Syrian crisis.

The Lebanese have taken opposing sides in Syria in a conflict that is increasingly playing out in the Bekaa and apparently also led to a rocket attack on Beirut’s suburbs last Sunday. Although Sunni and Hezbollah militants have fought in Syria from the early days of the civil war, Hezbollah has now broadened its fight, and sectarian anger and fear have grown.

The Syrian war took a more regional turn in April, when the government began an aggressive campaign to recapture Qusayr, a central rebel-held town in Homs Province near the Lebanese border that connects the Syrian capital, Damascus, with Syria’s Mediterranean coast. After Hezbollah started sending fighters to support the Syrian Army in its offense on Qusayr, attacks on Lebanese soil began, targeting Hezbollah-controlled areas in the Bekaa Valley and their hub in Beirut’s southern suburbs. The conflict sparked sectarian clashes in Lebanon between groups supporting the opposition and others supporting the Syrian government, particularly in the northern Sunni city of Tripoli, leaving several dead and many others injured.

“No matter how hard you try to keep them under the lid, Syria’s problems and wars are bound to reach us,” said Aida Daouk, 82, a Beirut resident reached by phone. “It is scaring us. More people from here are going there to fight, eventually more people from there will come here to fight.”


Anne Barnard reported from Beirut, and Hala Droubi from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.


This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 1, 2013


Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the attack on Baalbek. It was not the first time a Hezbollah hub had been targeted; other strongholds in the Beirut suburbs and elsewhere in the Bekaa Valley have been hit previously.


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/wo...ents.html?_r=0