Hussam Muhammad, Baladi News, Damascus
Hezbollah and the Lebanese army attacked on Saturday night the Syrian refugees in Jaroud Arsal on the Syrian-Lebanese borders with heavy artillery shelling, mortars, and heavy machine guns, exploiting the clashes that broke between groups affiliated to "ISIS" and others that belong to Al-Nusra Front.
The official spokesman for the general body of the city of Yabroud, Abu Al-Joud Al-Qalamouni said in an interview with Baladi News: "Clashes erupted on Saturday between a group of the families of the town of Flitah affiliated to "ISIS" and Al-Nusra Front militants in Jroud Arsal that lasted for several hours and resulted in the killing and wounding many people of the two parties".
Al-Qalamouni indicated that the reason behind the clashes between the two parties is that a group of the town of Flitah advocating ISIS transferred a fuel tank "diesel" to the ISIS-centered areas which pushed Al-Nusra Front to target the tank, then ISIS repulsed by laying an ambush to Al-Nusra Front in which they killed 3 commanders of the latter, most notably Abu Sohaib Al-Tali, the deputy commander of Abu Malek, Al-Nusra Front leader in Al-Qalamoun.
The source pointed out that the Lebanese army and Hezbollah exploited the clashes by severely bombarding the areas of clashes and the Syrian refugees camps in Wadi Homaid region using heavy artillery shelling, mortars, and heavy machineguns, despite that the clashes are significantly far from the refugees areas. The bombardment led to the killing of one child and dozens of casualties in addition to the burning of a number of camps.
"A state of concern is prevailing the refugees in the region as they are afraid of repeating last year's incident when clashes between "ISIS" and Al-Nusra Front broke out which were exploited by "Hezbollah" and regime forces who had advanced on large areas in Al-Jroud, although the stationing areas of the rebels' battalions are far away from "ISIS", Al-Qalamouni added.
Fears of renewing the clashes mean destroying the rest areas of Jroud al-Qalamoun and fully besieging the city of Arsal, taking into consideration that Arsal and the camps are void of any armed militias, neither from Al-Nusra Front, nor from "ISIS".