Suicide bomber kills soldiers at checkpoint in Lebanon

A suicide bomber driving an explosives-laden car has targeted a Lebanese army checkpoint near the Syrian border, killing and wounding several soldiers.

The blast near the eastern border town of Arsal occurred hours after forces loyal to Syrian president Bashar Assad routed rebels from two Syrian villages that lie just across the border.

The bombing wounded and killed six soldiers, the National News Agency (NNA) said, without providing a breakdown.

The bombing underscored how the violence of the three-year-old uprising in neighbouring Syria has ensnared its fragile neighbour, igniting violent sectarian tensions between Lebanon’s Sunnis and Shiites.

The NNA said the Ahrar al-Sunna in Baalbek Brigade, an extremist Sunni group, claimed responsibility for the bombing in a message sent on Twitter.

Sunni extremists have in the past claimed responsibility for attacking Lebanese soldiers. They accuse them of being partial to their rivals, the Shiite group Hezbollah.

Earlier this week, assailants killed two Lebanese soldiers in the northern town of Tripoli, where there have been clashes between two neighbourhoods, in fighting linked to the Syrian war.

Hezbollah fighters are waging war alongside Syrian soldiers to quell the uprising against Assad’s rule.

Today they captured two villages near the border with Lebanon, continuing a weeks-long advance that has cut a major supply route for weapons and fighters into the country from eastern Lebanon, said activists and state TV.

The villages of Flita and Ras Maara were the latest targets of a government offensive in the rugged Qalamoun border region after troops captured the town of Yabroud earlier this month. Tens of thousands of Syrians fled into Lebanon since the Qalamoun offensive began in November.

Flita, about 5 miles from the border with Lebanon, had been a major crossing point for rebels coming into Syria to fight Assad’s forces.

It is part of the Qalamoun region, which holds strategic value for the government. It is situated along the main north-south highway that links the capital to government strongholds along the Mediterranean coast.

State TV said the villages fell after government forces “wiped out the last remnants of armed terrorist groups and destroyed its weapons and tools they used in their crimes”. The Syrian government refers to rebels as “terrorists.”

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also confirmed Syrian forces backed by fighters of the Shiite Lebanese group Hezbollah seized the villages.

Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah openly began waging war alongside Assad’s forces last year, allowing Syrian forces to regain swathes of territory lost to armed rebels since the uprising began three years ago.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said his fighters would remain in Syria for now.

Speaking at a cultural event in south Lebanon, on a large projected screen that broadcast his live speech from a secret location, the black-turbaned cleric said Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon were defending Syria and their own country from the scourge of extremist Sunni groups.

“We have taken on this burden and are continuing with it,” Nasrallah said.

The NNA said about 700 Syrians fled the fighting to the Lebanese border town of Arsal. Lebanese soldiers were checking people’s identity cards to make sure no fighters were among them, it said.

As Syrian forces seized the two villages, Syrian war planes carried out an air raid on the hilly outskirts of Arsal. Deputy mayor Ahmad Fliti said there were no casualties.