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 At least 20 rockets launched from across the border struck
Lebanese frontier areas, according to the Lebanese army, in further
spillover from Syria's civil war that has raised tensions across
Lebanon.
Lebanon, itself shattered by civil war from 1975 to 1990, has been
struggling to keep itself out of the nearly three-year conflict
raging in its much larger neighbor, with more than 100,000 people
killed there.
But with sectarian sympathies aligning different Lebanese groups
with Syria's warring parties, spillover has become increasingly
frequent. Lebanon is now coping with increased car bombings, some of
them hitting the heart of the capital Beirut.
The National News Agency said a single rocket was responsible for
the death toll in Arsal, an area sympathetic to the mostly Sunni
Muslim rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
A Lebanese national security source said there were eight casualties
from two rockets in Arsal, but could not confirm how many were dead
or wounded. Security sources inside the town said seven rockets
crashed around Arsal, with a field clinic and a Syrian refugee camp
both hit.
The security source said that a Syrian fighter jet was targeting a
town on the Syrian side of the frontier, but was not the source of
the rocket fire.
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Rockets also crashed into areas around the northern Lebanese border
town of Hermel. One hit inside Hermel but caused no major damage,
while two more rockets fell in neighboring villages, without
reported casualties.
Hermel is supportive of Lebanon's powerful Shi'ite Muslim militant
movement Hezbollah, which has been fighting in Syria on the side of
Assad, himself from the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of
Shi'ite Islam.
A day earlier, Hermel, which is regularly the target of rocket and
mortar attacks from Syrian rebels, suffered its first car bomb
attack.
The attack, which killed four people including a suicide bomber
inside the car, was claimed by the Lebanese branch of the Nusra
Front, the Syrian rebel group affiliated with al Qaeda. It has not
been possible to verify the claim.
(Writing by Erika Solomon; editing by Mark Heinrich)
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