WORLD_ Hezbollah Stronghold Is Attacked From Syria

Hezbollah Stronghold Is Attacked From Syria

By ANNE BARNARD and HALA DROUBI
Published: June 1, 2013
The New York Times


BEIRUT, Lebanon — Sixteen mortar shells and rockets fired from Syria crashed in a stronghold of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group, in eastern Lebanon on Friday night, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported Saturday.

The agency reported no casualties, but said the rockets fell overnight on Baalbek, a Bekaa Valley town and Hezbollah power center with a Shiite majority, a sizable Sunni minority and a smaller Christian one. The rockets set fields and bushes afire but avoided the city center.

The attacks came almost a week after Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, increased and openly declared his military support for the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria as Hezbollah fighters crossed into Syria to lead an assault on the strategic rebel-held town of Qusayr. Syrian opposition groups, which aim to overthrow Mr. Assad, condemned Mr. Nasrallah’s stand and called for his fighters to withdraw from Syrian soil. Some rebel brigade leaders threatened to retaliate against Hezbollah directly.

The location of the shelling increased fears that spillover from the Syrian conflict was spreading deeper into Lebanon. Indiscriminate shelling has hit the smaller Shiite village of Hermel, in northeastern Lebanon, in recent weeks, killing several civilians. But Friday night’s rockets could be the most provocative yet, hitting a major population center in the northeastern Bekaa Valley. Baalbek is the farthest south in the Bekaa that shells from Syria targeting Hezbollah-controlled areas have reached.

Baalbek is home to one of Lebanon’s most important archaeological sites and tourist destinations, the Baalbek ruins, which include a pre-Hellenic temple and later Roman structures. It is also the site of an annual summer music festival that draws people from all over the region. Unrest in the Bekaa Valley would further hurt the Lebanese tourist and agricultural economies, which have already been devastated by the Syrian crisis.

The Lebanese have taken opposing sides in Syria in a conflict that is increasingly playing out in the Bekaa and is believed to be behind a rocket attack on the outskirts of Beirut’s Hezbollah-dominated suburbs last Sunday. Although Lebanese Sunni and Hezbollah militants have fought in Syria from the early days of the civil war, Hezbollah has now broadened its fight, and sectarian anger and fear have grown.

The Syrian war took a more regional turn in April, when the government began an aggressive campaign to recapture Qusayr. After Hezbollah started sending fighters to support the Syrian Army in its offense on Qusayr, what had been occasional attacks on Lebanese soil intensified, targeting Hezbollah-controlled areas in the Bekaa Valley and its hub in Beirut’s southern suburbs. The conflict also intensified sectarian clashes in Lebanon between groups supporting the opposition and others supporting the Syrian government, particularly in the northern Sunni city of Tripoli, leaving dozens dead and many others injured.

In besieged Qusayr, the humanitarian situation was deteriorating after 13 days of fighting. Mohamed al-Abdullah, an opposition activist in Qusayr, said via Skype that about 400 people had been killed and more than 1,000 wounded since the battle began.

Another resident of Qusayr, who had fled to Baalbek, said doctors in Qusayr were sometimes forced to amputate limbs that had become infected because they had run out of sterilization supplies. The man, who gave only his family name, Zhouri, said more than 11,000 Hezbollah fighters were in town, burning apricot and apple orchards and shooting at wounded people trying to escape. “No matter how hard you try to keep them under the lid, Syria’s problems and wars are bound to reach us,” said Aida Daouk, 82, a Beirut resident reached by phone.

Anne Barnard reported from Beirut, and Hala Droubi from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 1, 2013

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the attack on Baalbek. It was not the first time a Hezbollah hub had been targeted; other strongholds in the Beirut suburbs and elsewhere in the Bekaa Valley have been hit previously.

A version of this article appeared in print on June 2, 2013, on page A8 of the National edition with the headline: Stronghold Of Hezbollah Is Attacked .

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