A commander of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA), issuing a 48-hour ultimatum, has warned his forces will target Lebanon’s Hezbollah unless the militant group stops shelling territory held by the insurgents.
The threat was issued on Wednesday after the outgunned rebel fighters shot down a regime warplane following a deadly airstrike that killed 20 people in a Damascus province town.
General Selim Idriss, the FSA chief of staff, told reporters on Wednesday that Hezbollah had long been taking part in hostilities in Syria, but had gone too far by shelling villages near Qusayr in Homs Province from the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon.
“Hezbollah is abusing Lebanese sovereignty to shell Syrian territory and Free Syrian Army positions,” Idriss said.
“In the past week ... Hezbollah has been shelling into villages around Qusayr from Lebanese territory, and that we cannot accept,” he added.
The commander said the rebels were giving Hezbollah a 48-hour deadline to stop the attacks and “as soon as the ultimatum ends, we will start responding to the sources of fire.”
Rebels in the Qusayr area would be backed by FSA fighters “equipped with long-range weapons from other areas,” he said.
The FSA had also asked the Lebanese president and premier to intervene, Idriss said, but the office of Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati denied any contact with the Syrian rebels.
Hezbollah has repeatedly denied sending fighters into Syria, though its leader Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged in October last year that party members had fought Syrian rebels but said they were acting as individuals and not under the group’s direction.
Lebanon is sharply divided over the Syrian conflict, with the Sunni-led March 14 movement supporting the revolt and the Shiite Hezbollah and its allies backing the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
On Wednesday, a Lebanese military judge demanded the death penalty for former Lebanese information minister Michel Samaha and Syrian security chief Ali Mamlouk, who face charges of plotting attacks on political and religious figures in Lebanon.
Samaha, a Christian politician with close links to the Damascus regime, was accused of stoking sectarian strife in Lebanon.
On the ground in Syria, rebels managed to shoot down a warplane in Hammuriyeh, after an airstrike on the central town killed 20 people, including a woman and child, a watchdog and activists said.
Amateur video shot by activists and distributed by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights showed a warplane firing from the sky and then going down in flames after apparently being hit.
Lacking sophisticated weaponry, rebels have frequently used heavy machine guns to shoot down warplanes deployed to strike insurgent enclaves across the country.
An unverified video filmed by activists in Hammuriyeh and posted on Facebook showed residents in the aftermath of the strike pouring water on a burning corpse on the ground, and another two in destroyed vehicles.
In Damascus, a footballer was killed and four others wounded when two mortar rounds smashed into a stadium in the capital, a sports official told reporters.
State news agency SANA blamed “terrorists” for the attack.
The day before, mortar rounds fired by the rebels had exploded near the southern wall of Tishreen presidential palace, one of three official residencies in the capital.
It was the first such attack on a presidential palace reported by state media.
Elsewhere, clashes raged in the northern province of Aleppo around three key airports, days after rebels launched an assault to seize the international airport and other air bases in the region.
At least 122 people were killed nationwide on Wednesday, among them 65 civilians, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of sources for its information.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the