Hezbollah and Syrian army forces battling on behalf of the Bashar al-Assad regime are close to seizing the town of Nabuk, one of the last areas in the Lebanon-adjacent Qalamoun region still controlled by opposition forces, amid renewed concerns from Lebanese officials that blowback generated by Hezbollah’s participation in Syria’s nearly three-year war will trigger violence inside their own country. Agence France-Presse (AFP) yesterday assessed the impact should the regime take control of Nabuk.
“There is fierce fighting in Nabuk between government forces, backed by Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, and Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The monitor, which relies on activists and medics on the ground for its information, said President Bashar al-Assad’s troops have taken “new sectors of the town”. Regime forces have surrounded and pounded Nabuk for the past two weeks. “The Syrian army is continuing to rake orchards in Nabuk, and has discovered a terrorist lair containing medical equipment and drugs,” state television said…Taking the Nabuk area would cement regime control of territory linking Damascus province with Homs province in central Syria.
The gains would be the latest since the Syrian army, with critical backing from Hezbollah, launched a sustained offensive last summer with an eye toward eroding years of opposition gains. Several Hezbollah figures including Ali Bazzi, a senior commander, have reportedly been killed in recent days fighting in Syria. Meanwhile Lebanese media this weekend reported on comments made by the country’s Interior Minister, Marwan Charbel, in which Charbel worried that Al Qaeda was seeking to consolidate its presence inside Lebanon after several attacks on Hezbollah and Iranian interests. Ya Libnon conveyed quotes from Sirajuddin Zureiqat, the head of the Lebanese branch of the Al Qaeda-affiliated Abdullah Azzam Brigades:
The sound of the blasts from the Iranian embassy attack had barely subsided when Sirajuddin Zureiqat, leader of the Lebanese branch of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Abdullah Azzam Brigades, claimed responsibility for the attack on Twitter, declaring the suicide bombers “two heroes of the Sunnis in Lebanon,” and dubbing the attack “the Iranian Embassy raid in Beirut.” With this development an unknown branch of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades entered the limelight. In addition to the already known Ziad Jarrah Brigades, Zureiqat unveiled the Hussein bin Ali Brigades, warning, “Operations in Lebanon will continue, God willing, until two things are achieved: withdrawing the members of Iran’s Party [i.e. Hezbollah] from Syria, and releasing our prisoners from the prisons of oppression in Lebanon.”
[Photo: FreedomHouse / Flickr]