Five Soldiers Injured in Arsal Blast

Five soldiers were injured in a blast that targeted an army tank in Ras al-Sarj in the eastern border town of Arsal, the state-run National News Agency said on Friday.

Gunfire was later heard in the area and the army deployed heavily, NNA added.

It added that the troops engaged in heavy clashes with the gunmen in the Khalaf al-Jafar area in Arsal.

Afterwards, the army raided the refugee encampments close to the site of the explosion.

Al-Jadeed TV said that the bomb was planted on the side of the road.

The explosion came a day after a suicide bomber killed several people there when he entered a meeting of Syrian clerics and detonated an explosive belt.

Arsal lies along Lebanon's border with Syria and is a Sunni Muslim enclave in mainly Shiite eastern Lebanon. It hosts many Syrian refugees as well as rebel fighters in the surrounding countryside.

The town was the scene of fierce fighting in August 2014 between Lebanese security forces and jihadists of Al-Qaeda's Syria affiliate Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State group.

As they withdrew from Arsal, the jihadists took dozens of Lebanese police and soldiers hostage and still hold them in the hilly terrain on the town's outskirts.

In October, eight people were killed and others wounded when Lebanon's army targeted militant positions along the mountainous eastern border.