FSA Denies Shelling Hizbullah Positions in Lebanon, Syria
Conflicting reports emerged on Thursday that the Free Syrian Army had shelled Hizbullah positions in Lebanon and Syria, various media outlets said.
The FSA said that the attacks targeted a Hizbullah artillery position in Lebanon's Hermel region in the Bekaa, reported al-Arabiya.
Head of the FSA's Farouq brigades Taleb al-Dayekh announced that it launched “mortar attacks against a number of Hizbullah locations in Lebanon's Hosh al-Sayyed Ali region,” reported Voice of Lebanon radio (100.5).
The rebel FSA later said that it shelled a Hizbullah position in the western Reef Qusayr area near the Lebanese-Syrian border.
FSA sources later denied to Sky News that it had targeted Hizbullah positions in and outside of Syria.
Earlier this week, the FSA accused Hizbullah of firing across the border into territory it controls, threatening to shell party positions in Lebanon in retaliation.
“In the past week... Hizbullah has been shelling into villages around Qusayr from Lebanese territory, and that we cannot accept," said the FSA's chief of staff General Selim Idriss.
Three Lebanese Shiites have been killed in fighting in Syria, a Hizbullah official said Sunday.
He said they were acting in "self-defense,” without specifying if they were Hizbullah members.
Hizbullah has systematically denied sending fighters into Syria, though its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged in October 2012 that party members had fought Syrian rebels but said they were acting as individuals and not under the group's direction.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the three slain Lebanese were members of pro-regime militias who had been trained by Hizbullah.
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