BEIRUT: Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said Monday that his country’s forces would respond to incoming fire from neighbouring Syria that authorities said had killed a child.
Clashes broke out late Sunday at the Syrian-Lebanese border, with the new authorities in Damascus accusing the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah of abducting three soldiers into Lebanon and killing them.
A Lebanese security source told AFP that Syrian forces fired shells into Lebanon after the three security personnel were killed in the Lebanese village of Qasr by local gunmen involved in smuggling.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) said the border clashes resumed on Monday following fresh Syrian shelling.
“What is happening on the eastern and northeastern borders cannot continue,” Aoun said in a post on X. “I have directed the Lebanese army to respond to the source of the fire.”
The army announced it had undertaken “exceptional security measures and intensive communications” since Sunday night that had led to the return of the three Syrian soldiers’ bodies to authorities there.
It said Lebanese border towns and villages had seen “shelling from the direction of Syrian territory”, noting that army units responded with “appropriate weapons, reinforced their deployment and controlled the security situation”.
Communications were ongoing between “the army command and Syrian authorities to restore security and preserve the stability of the border area”, it added.
Lebanese information minister Paul Morcos said one child had been killed and six other people wounded by the Syrian shelling, adding that many civilians had also been displaced in the border area.
Earlier Monday, Syrian authorities in Homs province reported that a photographer and a journalist were wounded along the border, according to state news agency SANA.
They accused Hezbollah of “targeting them with a guided missile”.
Hezbollah was a key backer of Syria’s former president Bashar al-Assad before he was toppled in a lightning offensive by Islamist-led rebels in December.
Syria’s new authorities announced last month the launch of a security campaign in the border province of Homs aimed at shutting down routes used for arms and goods smuggling.
Under Assad, Syria had been a key link in Iran’s anti-Israel “axis of resistance”, serving as a conduit for weaponry flowing to fellow Tehran ally Hezbollah.
The new authorities in Damascus have accused Hezbollah of launching attacks, saying it was sponsoring cross-border smuggling gangs.
Speaking at a donor conference for Syria in Brussels, foreign minister Asaad al-Shaibani said Damascus would “not tolerate any attempts to undermine Syrian sovereignty”.
He accused “outlawed parties”, including “some militias stationed on our borders with neighbouring countries”, of posing a persistent threat to Syria’s security and stability, without naming a particular group.
