Lebanon army will fight back if attacked
2013-02-04 16:16
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Syria
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Beirut - Lebanon's army chief has warned that the
military will "pursue" anyone who attacks it, in an interview
published on Monday after two troops were killed in a clash with Islamists.
"Any hand that aggresses the army will be cut
off," army commander Jean Kahwaji told newspaper Al-Safir.
"We will pursue the attackers wherever they are, and
whatever party they are loyal to," Kahwaji added.
The army chief had on Sunday said that Friday's attack on
an army patrol in the east Lebanon area of Arsal, near the Syrian border, was
"premeditated".
Kahwaji also said
the soldiers were killed in a "barbaric way".
"Methods were used that are against our Christian
and Muslim beliefs," he said of the attack, in which two Lebanese
soldiers, one a captain, were killed in the clash with militants.
Security officials have identified the attackers as
radical Islamists.
A local official told AFP the soldiers were killed using
axes and their corpses mutilated, adding that they had likely been tortured
before their deaths.
The army has in the wake of the attacks launched an
in-depth security operation in the area.
On Sunday, Kahwaji praised the army for "standing in
the face of plans for our country to be consumed by regional chaos".
Lebanon has suffered a spillover of Syria's raging war,
which the UN says has left 60 000 people dead in nearly two years.
Northern and eastern Lebanon have been struck by frequent
cross-border shelling and clashes, while the Syrian regime has told Lebanon to
better control its porous border to prevent the smuggling of fighters and arms.
According to Al-Safir newspaper, Friday's ambush "is
an indicator of the risk posed by [Islamist] cells that have been created on
the front-line due to the Syrian crisis".
Lebanon was dominated politically and militarily by Syria
for nearly 30 years.
The small Mediterranean country is sharply divided over
the Syrian revolt, which erupted in March 2011.
Shi’ite movement Hezbollah and its allies back the regime
of President Bashar Assad, while the Sunni-led Future movement and its allies
support the revolt.
- SAPA
