Lebanese president says forces will respond to Syrian fire after child killed

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun says that his country’s forces will respond to incoming fire from neighboring Syria that authorities said killed a child.

Clashes broke out late Sunday at the Syrian-Lebanese border, with the new authorities in Damascus accusing the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah of abducting three soldiers into Lebanon and killing them.

A Lebanese security source tells AFP that Syrian forces fired shells into Lebanon after the three security personnel were killed in the Lebanese village of Qasr by local gunmen involved in smuggling.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) says the border clashes resumed on Monday following fresh Syrian shelling.

“What is happening on the eastern and northeastern borders cannot continue,” Aoun says in a post on X. “I have directed the Lebanese army to respond to the source of the fire.”

The army says that it undertook “exceptional security measures and intensive communications” since last night that had led to the return of the three Syrian soldiers’ bodies to authorities there.

It says Lebanese border towns and villages have seen “shelling from the direction of Syrian territory,” noting that army units responded with “appropriate weapons, reinforced their deployment and controlled the security situation.”

Communications were ongoing between “the army command and Syrian authorities to restore security and preserve the stability of the border area,” it adds.

Lebanese Information Minister Paul Morcos says one child was killed and six other people wounded by the Syrian shelling, adding that many civilians had also been displaced in the border area.

Hezbollah was a key backer of Syria’s former president Bashar al-Assad before he was toppled in a lightning offensive by Islamist-led rebels in December.