Lebanon says it will retaliate for gunfire from Syria amid deadly fighting on border
War monitor says 5 Syrian soldiers killed Monday, during clashes that began Saturday, when 3 Syrians were killed in Lebanon in alleged Hezbollah abduction
Lebanon’s president on Monday ordered troops to retaliate for gunfire from the Syrian side of the border after deadly fighting erupted overnight along the tense frontier and as more was reported on Monday.
“What is happening along the eastern and northeastern border cannot continue and we will not accept that it continues,” Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun said on X. “I have given my orders to the Lebanese army to retaliate against the source of fire.”
Aoun added that he asked Lebanon’s foreign minister, who is currently in Brussels for a donors conference on Syria, to contact Syrian officials to resolve the problem “and prevent further escalation.”
The fighting occurred after Syria’s interim government accused operatives from Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group of crossing into Syria on Saturday, abducting three soldiers and killing them on Lebanese soil.
It was the most serious cross-border fighting since the ouster of longtime Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in December.
State-run Syrian News Channel, citing an unnamed Defense Ministry official, said the Syrian army shelled “Hezbollah gatherings that killed Syrian soldiers” along the border. Hezbollah denied involvement in a statement on Sunday.
Information Minister Paul Morkos said Lebanon’s defense minister told a cabinet meeting that the three killed were smugglers. He added that one child was killed and six people were wounded on the Lebanese side.
On Monday, a Syrian soldier was reported killed by Hezbollah rocket fire and at least three people were killed as the Syrian army shelled a Lebanese village, Arabic-language media reported.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor of unclear funding, said five Syrian soldiers were killed during Monday’s clashes.
Lebanon’s state news agency reported that fighting intensified Monday evening near the Lebanese town of Hermel.
Violence recently spiked in the area between the Syrian military and armed Lebanese Shiite clans closely allied with the former government of Assad, based in Lebanon’s Al-Qasr border village.
Lebanese media and the observatory say clans were involved in the abductions that sparked the latest clashes.
The Lebanese and Syrian armies said they have opened channels of communication to ease tensions. Lebanon’s military also said it returned the bodies of the three killed Syrians. Large numbers of Lebanese troops have been deployed in the area.
Lebanese media reported low-level fighting at dawn after an attack on a Syrian military vehicle. The number of casualties was unclear.
Syrian journalists embedded with army lightly wounded
Early Monday, four Syrian journalists embedded with the Syrian army were lightly wounded after an artillery shell fired from the Lebanese side of the border hit their position. They accused Hezbollah of the attack.
Meanwhile, senior Hezbollah legislator Hussein Haj Hassan, in an interview with Lebanon’s Al Jadeed television, accused fighters from the Syrian side of crossing into Lebanese territory and attacking border villages. His constituency is the northeastern Baalbek-Hermel province, which has borne the brunt of the clashes.
Hezbollah was a key backer of Assad before he was toppled in a lightning offensive by Islamist-led rebels in December.
Syria’s new authorities announced last month the launch of a security campaign in the border province of Homs, aimed at shutting down routes used for arms and goods smuggling. They accused Hezbollah of launching attacks, saying it was sponsoring cross-border smuggling gangs.
Lebanon, meanwhile, has been seeking international support to boost funding for its military as it gradually deploys troops along its porous northern and eastern borders with Syria as well as its southern border with Israel.
The Times of Israel Community.