Hezbollah, Syrian army attack Islamists
>> CAIRO: The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and the Syrian army launched a major operation on Friday that aimed to dislodge a pocket of Islamic fighters from their stronghold on the border between Lebanon and Syria.
Fighters and soldiers advanced on two fronts, near the Lebanese town of Arsal and the Syrian town of Fleita, into a mountainous area where an array of Islamic militant groups have taken shelter in recent years among camps for Syrian refugees.
Explosions rang out in eastern Lebanon as Hezbollah shelled a distant ridgeline while Syrian warplanes struck on the other side of the border. Early reports said both sides had casualties.
The offensive had been anticipated for weeks and comes at a time of mounting frustration over how the Syrian crisis has spilled over into Lebanon, a country of 4 million people that has become home to more than 1 million Syrian refugees since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad erupted in 2011.
Arsal has long been a security concern. Tens of thousands of Syrian refugees live in camps near the town that are also home to Sunni militants from the Islamic State, the Nusra Front and other jihadi groups fighting in Syria’s six-year-old civil war. In 2014, jihadis briefly seized control of Arsal in fierce fighting; nine Lebanese soldiers captured during the clashes are still missing.
In June, Lebanese army units tried to move into Arsal to rout the militants but were attacked by suicide bombers. Subsequent attempts to persuade the militants to leave peacefully failed. Lebanon’s prime minister, Saad Hariri, this week warned against blaming Syrian refugees for the trouble. Hezbollah, the powerful Shia group backed by Iran, a staunch ally of Mr Assad, said it was time to clear out the camps for good.
On Friday, Hezbollah-controlled news media outlets reported early progress.
Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television station showed artillery shelling Juroud Arsal, a barren, mountainous area east of Arsal.
There were reports of Syrian airstrikes on Islamic militants’ positions on the other side of the border, near Fleita.
Citing security sources, Reuters said Hezbollah had killed 23 militants and captured an operations centre along the border. Hezbollah said six of its fighters had been killed. The figures could not be independently verified.
Reached by text message, Abdul Halim Shams, a Syrian refugee from Homs, said explosions rang out across Arsal all day, reviving memories of the war the refugees had fled. “It was so terrifying,” he said. “It reminded me of the old days in Syria.”
The Lebanese army is not directly part of the Arsal operation, but it deployed forces to the area this week, and on Friday they took up defensive positions around the town. The UN refugee agency said a small number of Syrian refugees living near Arsal had fled to the safety of the town’s centre by evening.
This month Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said it was “high time” to end the threat from militants in Arsal. But his group’s muscular role in Syria has drawn sharp criticism from political rivals in Lebanon, including Hariri’s Future Movement party. The White House announced on Friday that Hariri would meet with President Donald Trump on Tuesday to discuss terrorism, economic issues and the refugee crisis.
Also in Washington, Gen Tony Thomas, commander of the military’s Special Operations Command, provided the first public confirmation by a US official that the Trump administration had ended a secret CIA programme to arm Syrian rebels.
The programme remains classified, and news reports this week about it being shut cited only anonymous US officials. But on Friday, Gen Thomas, at the Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, Colorado, was asked if the effort had been cut to curry favour with Russia. His answer confirmed its existence, and its end.
“At least from what I know about that programme and the decision to end it, it was absolutely not a sop to the Russians,” he said. He added that ending the programme was a “tough, tough decision”. The CIA declined to comment.