BAALBEK, Lebanon (The Daily Star): Calm returned to Lebanon's eastern border Monday following fierce fighting between Hezbollah and Nusra Front extremists that left nearly two dozen combatants killed, according to security sources.
Hezbollah acknowledged the deaths of eight fighters and said it would hold funeral processions later Monday for at least two that were killed in the Bekaa Valley town of Labweh.
Security sources said at least 20 Hezbollah fighters were wounded in the clashes that broke out Sunday evening outside the village of Brital. They were taken to hospitals in Baalbek, particularly the Hezbollah-run Dar al-Hikmeh, the sources told The Daily Star.
They said 14 Nusra Front jihadists were killed in the clashes that ebbed around 3 a.m. Monday.
Hezbollah captured five Nusra militants, the sources said.
They said Hezbollah fighters repelled Nusra Front attacks on the party’s two main posts – Ain al-Saaa and Mihfara – on the farthest edge of Brital Sunday afternoon.
Later in the evening, Hezbollah also attacked Nusra hideouts on the outermost edge of Brital.
A source from Hezbollah told The Daily Star that militants had briefly taken over one of the posts but the party swiftly regained control of the site.
"All the fighting is taking place inside Syrian territories as militants are seeking to gain a foothold in Qalamoun, where their presence is weak," the source said. "They have been launching intermittent attacks."
The Nusra Front, however, claimed that it had been attacked by Hezbollah. The group tweeted Monday morning that jihadists had repulsed a Hezbollah attack on the outskirts of Nahleh, a village northeast of Baalbek, killing and wounding dozens of fighters from the "resistance and rejectionist party."
The rebels have been caught in the no-man’s land between the two countries since the Syrian regime and Hezbollah regained the majority of Syria’s Qalamoun region earlier this year.
The porous border region had served as a major supply line for the Syrian rebels over the more than three and a half year old civil war, but the rebels increasingly came into conflict with the Lebanese Army after being pushed out of Qalamoun.
Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian civil war alongside President Bashar Assad’s forces has been cited by the rebels as their justification for their attacks on Lebanon, which have grown over the last year, culminating in the fierce August battles in Arsal that ended with 19 soldiers dead and more than 30 troops and policemen being taken hostage by the Nusra Front and ISIS.
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