| New York Times | - |
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Syrian warplanes attacked targets inside eastern Lebanon on Monday, the official Lebanese National News Agency reported.
Syria Warplanes Hit Lebanon for First Time
By HANIA MOURTADA and RICK GLADSTONE
Published: March 18, 2013
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian warplanes attacked targets inside eastern Lebanon on Monday, the official Lebanese National News Agency
reported. It appeared to be the first time since the Syrian conflict
began two years ago that the military had used its air force to strike
at suspected rebel hideouts across the Lebanon border.
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A brief dispatch by the news agency said that “warplanes affiliated with
the Syrian Air Force” attacked the Wadi al-Khayl Valley area, near the
Lebanese border town of Arsal, without specifying whether they had
caused casualties or damage. The mountainous area is known for its
porous border. It is considered a haven for Syrian insurgents, and the
civilian population there largely opposes President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.
Al-Manar, the television broadcaster controlled by the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah,
which supports Mr. Assad, said the warplanes had targeted two barns
used by anti-Assad fighters. Agence France-Presse, quoting an
unidentified Lebanese security services official, said at least four
missiles were fired.
Syrian forces have occasionally fired guns or mortar rounds across the
Lebanon border in clashes with anti-Assad fighters, but had never before
used warplanes to attack suspected rebel positions inside Lebanese
territory.
There was no immediate confirmation of the attack from the Syrian
government. But it warned on Thursday that its forces might fire into
Lebanon because of what it called repeated incursions by terrorist
gangs, the standard official Syrian terminology for the armed opposition
to Mr. Assad.
That warning, contained in a diplomatic protest delivered through the
Syrian Embassy in Beirut, complained that “armed terrorist gangs have
infiltrated Syrian territory in large numbers from Lebanon.”
Lebanon’s government, mindful of the long history of entanglements with
its neighbor, has sought to remain neutral over the conflict in Syria.
But sectarian tensions have been stoked by the conflict nonetheless,
aggravated in part by the influx of more than 300,000 Syrians seeking
refuge in Lebanon. Many of them are Sunnis, the Islamic sect that also
forms the backbone of the insurgency. Mr. Assad’s minority Alawite sect
is an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
The warplane attack was at least the third serious border episode in the
past few weeks, underscoring how the Syrian conflict has threatened to
destabilize the Middle East. On March 4, anti-Assad insurgents in
western Iraq killed dozens of Syrian soldiers who had temporarily sought safety on the Iraqi side of the border. On March 6, insurgents seized a group of United Nations soldiers
on patrol in the disputed Golan Heights region between Syria and
Israel, the first time international peacekeepers had been ensnared in
the Syrian conflict, but they were released three days later.
News of the warplane attack coincided with unconfirmed reports of mortar
fire in relatively affluent parts of Damascus. The Syrian Observatory
for Human Rights, an opposition group based in Britain with a network of
contacts inside Syria, reported that two mortar rounds had struck the
bridge linking the Mezzeh neighborhood to Mount Qasyoun in Damascus, and
that another mortar round had fallen in Mezzeh near the Ministry of
Higher Education. It was unclear which side had fired them.
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