​Lebanese army advances in border battle with extremists

By staff & agencies
On Line: 04 August 2014 16:45
In Print: Tuesday 05 August 2014


The Lebanese army advanced on Monday into a border town attacked by extremists at the weekend in the most serious spillover of the three-year-old Syrian civil war into Lebanon, and the Beirut government said the deadly assault would not go unpunished.

With army reinforcements arriving in Arsal, Prime Minister Tammam Salam, a Sunni Muslim, said there could be no "political solutions" with the Sunni radicals identified as members of the Nusra Front and the Islamic State, which has seized wide areas of Syria and Iraq.

"The only solution proposed today is the withdrawal of the militants from Arsal and its environs," said Salam, the most senior Sunni in Lebanese government.

Flanked by the rest of the cabinet, Salam accused the militants of seeking to "move their sick practices to Lebanon".

"We confirm that the attack on Lebanese national dignity will not go unpunished," he said.

Lebanon, still rebuilding from its own 1975-1990 civil war, has been buffeted by violence linked to the Syrian conflict including rocket attacks, suicide bombings and gun battles.

But this was the first major incursion by hardline takfiri militants who have become leading players in violence that has unfolded across the Levant, destabilizing Lebanon by inflaming its own sectarian tensions.

Soldiers advancing into Arsal found the bodies of 50 militants, a Lebanese security official said. The army said 14 soldiers had been killed, with 22 others missing and 86 injured in the fighting which erupted after security forces arrested a Syrian extremist rebel commander, Emad Jumaa, on Saturday.

More than a dozen other members of the security forces have been taken hostage. The army described the extremists' incursion as a long-planned attack. Local politicians say it marks an attempt to extend the Islamic State's footprint into Lebanon.

The militants have been beaten back in the border area in the past year by Syrian government forces backed by Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia Muslim political and military movement. Some 3,000 fighters are estimated to be in the border zone.

http://tehrantimes.com/world/117417-...h-extremists-/