Fighters From Syria Kill 10 Lebanese Soldiers in Battle Over Border Town
The New York Times reports that 10 Lebanese soldiers were killed and a dozen other captured in a “well-prepared, coordinated attack” on the northern Lebanese town of Arsal, near the border with Syria.
The toll was reported “one day after fighters from Syria — who included members of rebel brigades, an affiliate of al-Qaida and the extremist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — carried out a series of attacks on army checkpoints that left them largely in control” there, the paper writes. “Residents, aid workers and Syrian rebels reached in Arsal on Sunday said that insurgents had seized the town but that it was surrounded by the Lebanese army, which was shelling it.
“The two-day clash was the most recent spillover into Lebanon from the civil war in neighboring Syria. The two countries share a complex web of political and sectarian ties that have made the violence in Syria resonate in its smaller neighbor, where street clashes, car bombs and political deadlock related to the war in Syria have been common.”
Syrian Tribes Drive Out ISIS from Their Communities
The BBC reports that Syrian tribesmen in three eastern villages have driven out ISIS militants in a rare display of local resistance to the group.
“Four days of fighting left nine ISIS fighters, three tribesmen and five civilians dead,” the network says. “The jihadists’ actions in the Ashara area had bred resentment locally. ISIS is dedicated to building an Islamist state in Syria and Iraq. It built on its gains in Syria this summer to sweep through western and northern Iraq with support from local Sunni Muslims, overrunning the city of Mosul and threatening the capital Baghdad. In recent weeks, it also expanded territory under its control in Syria, capturing parts of the oil-rich province of Deir Ezzor.”
‘White Shrouds’ Mobilize Against ISIS in Syria
The Daily Star reports that last month’s “sweeping territorial gains by militants from ISIS in Deir Ezzor province have generated a fierce counteroffensive by locals, organized loosely in ‘popular resistance’ groups that are targeting the ultra-extremists.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says that the militants “launched a campaign of arrests in the village of Tayyaneh after its residents killed two ISIS members in a skirmish, and also issued an ultimatum to residents of seven other villages to leave their homes, because they were ‘implicated in fighting’ the group.”
ISIS was responding to the kidnapping of three ISIS members – a Syrian, an Iraqi and an Egyptian – by unknown assailants in the village of Swaidan, the Observatory added.
The incidents come a few weeks after ISIS established a foothold in the city of Deir al-Zor, at the expense of its rivals al-Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham, and swept through a number of villages in the province, many of which lie along the Euphrates River leading to the Iraqi border.
Observers say that the counteroffensive is very different than the seven-month long campaign against ISIS by rebel groups and rival jihadists, which has claimed thousands of lives.
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