Arsal Fighting Enters Third Day as Ceasefire Being Negotiated
Fierce fighting raged for the third day in the mountains around the northeastern border town of Arsal on Monday as the army announced 14 soldiers have been killed in the battles and as efforts to reach a ceasefire were underway.
A military source told LBCI television: “We have allowed a temporary ceasefire so that a Muslim Scholars Committee delegation can enter Arsal and return with the hostage soldiers, which is the first condition for continuing the implementation of the agreement's remaining points.”
There will be no truce, but rather a temporary ceasefire aimed at allowing the negotiating delegation to enter the town, explained LBCI.
The delegation stayed in the Bekaa's Chtaura for a while in the evening before heading to Arsal accompanied by a security convoy, several media outlets reported.
The initiative involves a ceasefire, the withdrawal of all gunmen from all Lebanese territories, the entry of medical convoys and the handing over of all hostages, it added.
The release of Imad Ahmed Jomaa, the al-Nusra Front official whose arrest on Saturday sparked the unrest, will remain under wraps.
OTV reported that a Muslim Scholars Committee delegation will head to Arsal after a meeting at the Grand Serail and the ceasefire is expected to start at 6:00 p.m.
Earlier, the army announced that 14 troops were killed and 86 wounded, while 22 are missing in the Arsal fighting.
Search operations are underway to find them, added the army in a statement on Monday afternoon.
“The army has been fighting armed terrorists and takfiris on a number of fronts in Arsal,” it continued, saying it has completed bolstering its positions on the frontlines and connecting them with the other positions for reinforcements when needed.
“Army units are chasing the armed groups that are still targeting soldiers and unarmed civilians in the town,” added the statement.
Earlier, the armed seized complete control of the technical school in Arsal after it came under attack by the terrorist groups.
“Meanwhile, the terrorist groups have been attacking the residents of Arsal and are preventing them from leaving the town,” continued the statement.
“On Sunday, the gunmen killed a number of citizens who refused to comply with their orders,” concluded the communique.
Soldiers fired mortar shells into the mountains and the sound of heavy machine gun fire could also be heard in the area of Arsal, an Agence France Presse correspondent on the outskirts of the town had reported earlier.
Cracks of heavy gunfire and the thud of shells could be heard from a distance as tanks pounded rebel positions in and around Arsal. A dozen Lebanese army flatbed trucks were seen carrying tanks toward the outskirts of Arsal on Monday.
In the early hours of Monday morning, several hundred people fled the town during a lull in the fighting.
They packed into pick-up trucks and cars to drive out of the region, where militants began fighting the Lebanese army on Saturday afternoon.
However, the army prevented Syrians from leaving Arsal.
Among those fleeing was Aziza Rayed, in her 60s, who said her family was going to the nearby border town of Qaa.
"We are leaving to take these children to a safer place," she said, her children and grandchildren in the back of a pickup truck.
The National News Agency reported on Monday however that the gunmen were preventing residents from fleeing the town, noting that they were being used as human shields.
Media reports said that fire swept through an encampment for Syrian refugees in the area.
The army had reportedly repelled an attack by around 600 gunmen on an army checkpoint near Arsal's technical school.
The clashes began after the arrest of a Syrian man accused of belonging to al-Qaida's Syrian branch Al-Nusra Front.
Following his arrest, gunmen surrounded army posts before opening fire, sparking the clashes.
An unspecified number of policeman were also reported missing in the unrest, with army chief General Jean Qahwaji saying Sunday that the troops might have been taken hostage.
Sheikh Mustafa al-Hujairi, a resident of Arsal, told MTV that the 16 ISF members and 19 soldiers “are safe and being held inside Lebanon, not Syria.”
He accused Hizbullah of targeting Lebanese and Syrian civilians in Arsal, demanding that the officials intervene immediately to tackle the situation.
“I do not belong to the al-Nusra Front, but I acted as a mediator with the group to protect the residents of Arsal,” he explained after reports emerged over his affiliations.
“I do not know when the security forces will be released,” he added.
Three civilians have also been killed in the unrest, according to security sources, two of them during the storming of a police post by the gunmen on Saturday and a third killed by sniper fire on Sunday in Arsal.
The violence is the worst in the area since the outbreak of the Syrian conflict in 2011.
Arsal is majority Sunni Muslim and broadly sympathetic to the Sunni-dominated uprising next door against Syria's Bashar Assad.
The town is hosting tens of thousands of refugees, and Qahwaji said Sunday that some of the gunmen had emerged from the informal refugee camps in the area.
More than one million Syrian refugees have fled to Lebanon, creating strains on local resources and tensions with the Lebanese population in some areas.
Source: Agence France Presse, Associated Press, Naharnet
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