The Lebanon president on Monday ordered troops to retaliate against the source of gunfire from the Syrian side of the border after more deadly battles broke out next to the tense border overnight.
The fighting occurred after the interim government of Syria fought fighters of the Hezbollah militant group of Lebanon on Saturday of crossing Syria on Saturday, kidnapping three soldiers and killing on the Lebanese land.
It has been the most serious border border battles since former Syrian President Bashar Assad in December.
Syrian news channel, referring to an unnamed official of the defense ministry, said the Syrian army shot “Hezbollah meetings that killed Syrian soldiers” along the border. Hezbollah denied involved in a statement on Sunday.
Information Minister Paul Morkos said the Minister of Defense of Lebanon told a cabinet meeting that the three were killed smugglers. He added that one child was killed and that six people were wounded on the Lebanese side.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor in Britain, said five Syrian soldiers died during Monday’s collisions. Footage distributed online and in local media has shown that families flee to the Lebanese city of Hermel.
Lebanon’s news agency reported that the fight had tightened near Hermel on Monday night.
“What happens along the eastern and northeastern border cannot continue and we will not accept that it will continue,” Lebanon president Joseph Aoun said at X. “I gave my commands to the Lebanese army to repay against the source of fire again.”
Aoun added that he asked Lebanon’s foreign minister, who is currently in Brussels for a donor conference on Syria, to contact Syrian officials to solve the problem “and prevent further escalation.”
Violence recently climbed into the area between the Syrian military and armed Lebanese Shiite Clans with the former Assad government, based in the Al-Qasr border town in Lebanon.
Lebanese media and the observatory say Clans was involved in the kidnappings that caused the latest clashes.
The Lebanese and Syrian armies said that they opened communication channels to facilitate tension. Lebanon’s army also said it returned the bodies of the three murdered Syrians. Large number of Lebanese troops has been deployed in the area.
Lebanese media reported battles at low -level battles at dawn after an attack on a Syrian military vehicle. The number of casualties was unclear.
Early Monday, four Syrian journalists embedded with the Syrian army were lightly wounded after an artillery shell was fired on the Lebanese side of the border. They accused Hezbollah of the attack.
Meanwhile, in an interview with Lebanon’s overall television accused fighters from the Syrian side of the Lebanese area and border villages. His constituency is the northeastern Baalbek hermel province, which carried most of the collisions.
Lebanon sought international support to promote financing for his military as it gradually deployed troops along its porous northern and eastern borders with Syria as well as its southern border with Israel.
The UN Hender Jeanine Henne Plasschaert spoke from the southern border on Monday, and the Security Council also warned that the continued presence of Israeli forces in the Lebanese area, along with the ongoing Israeli strikes, could easily lead to ‘serious ripple effects’.
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Associated Press writer Bassem Mrroue in Beirut and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
