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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| 9 die in VBIED attack in Lebanon |
| 2015-11-06 |
| BEIRUT: A roadside car bomb killed at least nine people and wounded four others in northeast Lebanon on Thursday, in an area close to the Syrian border where violence has spilled over from the war next door, security sources said. The blast ripped through a commercial area of the Sabil neighborhood of the town of Arsal. Emergency services were working to rescue people from the rubble, local media said. Militants linked to the conflict across the border in Syria have carried out attacks in and around Arsal in the past. Security sources said the blast was likely to have targeted an independent religious society made up of Syrian scholars. The head of the society, Sheikh Othman Mansour, was among the dead, the sources said. Lebanon’s National News Agency said the society had been involved in negotiations for the release of Lebanese soldiers still being held by militants after being captured when fighters overran Arsal last year. Militants from Al-Qaeda’s Syria branch, the Nusra Front, were involved in the clashes that led to the soldiers’ capture. There have been clashes between gunmen loyal to opposing sides in the Syrian conflict, as well as strikes on the army and cross-border attacks by Syrian rebels. The last significant security incident in the area took place on Saturday, when Lebanon’s army fired at a vehicle carrying militants, killing three of them. A separate attack by the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah in October killed five Daesh fighters elsewhere in the north of the country, security sources said. Meanwhile, fighters seized a key town along a vital road in Syria’s central Hama province, where regime forces are struggling to gain ground despite a month of Russian airstrikes. The setback for Damascus came as France announced it would deploy an aircraft carrier to boost its fight against the Islamic State group, which has seized control of large parts of Iraq and Syria. Jund al-Aqsa, was reported to have seized the last government-held town on the main highway between second city Aleppo to the north and the city of Hama to the south. |
| Posted by:badanov |