17 Lebanese Sunni fighter killed in Syria: security source
Seventeen young Lebanese Sunni men were killed on Friday in the Syrian border town of Tal Kalakh.
Seventeen young Sunni men from the Lebanese city of Tripoli were killed on Friday in the Syrian border town of Tal Kalakh, a Lebanese security source and an Islamist leader said.
The security source said he was informed of the deaths of the men "who went to Syria to fight with the rebels and were all killed in a trap in Homs province," which borders Lebanon.
The port city of Tripoli, whose population is majority Sunni, backs the rebellion against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who belongs to the Alawite sect of Shiite Islam.
"Young Islamists from different parts of the city left Tripoli this morning (Friday) and were killed in an ambush in Tal Kalakh by regime forces," an Islamist leader in the city told AFP.
"According to our information, they were summarily executed and not killed in combat," he said.
A security source reported that shots were fired on Friday night from the mainly Sunni Bab al-Tebbaneh district toward the neighbouring Shiite district of Jabal Mohsen.
He added that the army had been heavily deployed along the aptly-named Syria street dividing the districts, whose traditional rivalry has sharpened over the uprising in Syria.
A young Islamist activist from Bab al-Tebbaneh said that two brothers from the neighbourhood, the sons of a local cleric, were among those killed on Friday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, for its part, reported that a group of 30 rebels "were caught in an ambush by government troops in the area of Tal Sarin near the town of Tal Kalakh."
"It is unknown if they are being held prisoner or were killed," the monitoring group said.
Clashes erupt almost daily along the Syrian border, pitting Lebanese Shiite militiamen with close ties to Hezbollah against anti-Assad rebels, according to local residents and activists.
The Shiite movement Hezbollah, the most powerful armed force in Lebanon, is a key backer of Damascus and has been accused of sending its fighters across the border to fight alongside loyalist troops.
"Nearly 5,000 armed men protect our villages, and the majority are close to Hezbollah," a resident of the Lebanese border village Zeita told AFP.
