Army in Firefight with 'Syrian Gunmen'

Lebanese troops exchanged fire with unidentified Syrian gunmen near the country's border with Syria Friday, a security source said, after two-cross border incidents in the area.

There were no casualties in the gun battle, which came after at least one was killed by shelling from Syria and a deadly rebel attack against Syrian forces launched from inside Lebanon.

"Lebanese army forces exchanged fire with gunmen near an army checkpoint in an area near the town of Wadi Khaled," the security source said.

He added that the gunmen, believed to be Syrian, had escaped afterwards.

The fighting came after a barrage of shells fired from Syria hit the Akkar border city, killing a Syrian man and wounding three other people.

Nearby, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebels had launched an attack from Lebanese territory against two villages near the Syrian town of Tal kalakh.

The Britain-based group said five fighters, including soldiers, border guards and pro-regime militiamen, were killed.

Syria's conflict has regularly spilled over into Lebanon, with which it shares a long and porous border.

Rebels regularly move across the border, transporting arms, as do fighters from Hizbullah, which has dispatched forces to bolster the regime against the uprising.

More than 130,000 people have been killed since the Syrian conflict began on March 2011, and more than 2.4 million Syrians have become refugees.

More than 902,000 Syrian refugees are in Lebanon, which has been strained by the conflict in its much larger neighbor.