Lebanon says it was struck by shelling from Syria, after three Syrians were killed in Lebanon, escalating tensions between Beirut and Syria’s new Islamist-led government.
Lebanese villages on the border with Syria were subjected to shelling after three Syrians died in the northern Lebanese town of Qasr, the Lebanese military said on Monday, adding that its forces responded to the attack.
“Contacts continue between the army command and the Syrian authorities to maintain security and stability in the border area,” it said. The Syrian shelling also targeted Qasr, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said.
On Sunday, Syria’s defense ministry accused the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah of kidnapping three Syrian troops from Syrian territory in an ambush, the state news agency SANA reported, saying they were “taken to Lebanese territory and executed on the spot.”
It also said that a photographer and reporter were injured on the Syria-Lebanon border after being struck by a “Hezbollah missile.”
The Syrian defense ministry will take “all necessary measures following this dangerous escalation by Hezbollah,” SANA said.
The Lebanese army said that two Syrians were killed at the border and another died in hospital, and that the three bodies were handed over to Syria.
Hezbollah denied involvement in the border clashes, the Lebanese state news agency NNA reported, saying it “has no connection to any events taking place within Syrian territory.”
In response, Lebanon’s presidency said Monday that tensions on the country’s frontier with Syria “cannot go on.”
“What is happening on the eastern and northeastern borders cannot go on, and we will not accept its continuation,” the presidency said on X, adding that President Joseph Aoun has instructed the military to respond “to the source of fire.”
If confirmed to have been conducted by Syria, the attack on Lebanon would mark rare action by Syria’s new government on one of its neighbors. The country’s leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has repeatedly said he wants to maintain stability with Syria’s neighbors and has so far refrained from responding to repeated Israeli strikes on his country.
The clashes are a sign of growing tensions at the Lebanon-Syria border, northeast of the Beqaa valley, where predominantly Shiite Lebanese villages have seen skirmishes with Syrian soldiers in recent weeks.
Syria’s new government is led by former Sunni-Islamist militants who ousted the regime of Iran-allied Bashar al-Assad late last year. Shiite Hezbollah had intervened in Syria during the country’s civil war to help Assad fight the Sunni militants.
