BEIRUT: Lebanon’s army said it will immediately respond to any further cross-border attacks by the Syrian military after a helicopter gunship attacked the eastern town of Arsal yesterday.
“Army units deployed in the (Arsal) area took the necessary defensive measures to respond immediately to any similar violations,” a Lebanese Army statement said, in a rare warning against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Earlier yesterday, a helicopter raided Arsal, the majority of whose residents support the anti-Assad revolt in neighboring Syria, for the first time in the nearly 27-month conflict.
At 1:30 p.m., “a Syrian helicopter gunship crossed the border... and launched two rockets from a distance at the (Arsal) town center, injuring one person and causing material damage,” the army said. Arsal is sensitive because it is located just 12 km from the border with Syria.
Experts say it has been used as a conduit for weapons and rebel fighters to enter into Syria, while it has also served as a refuge for people fleeing the conflict into Lebanon.
Meanwhile, Syrian fighters have battled Shiites in a village in the country’s east, killing over 60 people including civilians, activists said yesterday. The fighting highlights the increasingly sectarian nature of the country’s civil war.
Activists say the dead were mostly pro-government militiamen, without specifying whether the noncombatants had been killed deliberately or were caught in the crossfire. But a Syrian government official denounced the attack on the Shiite-section of Sunni-majority Hatla village as a “massacre” of civilians.
Amateur videos released by activists showed fighters standing in front of burning homes captioned, “Setting fire to the houses of Shiites.” The video shows at least two bodies, one of them of a bearded man.
Thousands of rebels took part in the attack and at least 10 of them were killed in the fighting.