LEBANON: Prime Minister Tammam Salam says there can be no "political solutions" with Sunni radicals, as the army evacuates Syrian refugees from the town of Arsal

Record ID: 274609

  • Title: LEBANON: Prime Minister Tammam Salam says there can be no "political solutions" with Sunni radicals, as the army evacuates Syrian refugees from the town of Arsal
  • Date: 4th August 2014
  • Summary: BEIRUT, LEBANON (AUGUST 4, 2014) (REUTERS) EXTERIOR OF GOVERNMENT BUILDING LEBANESE FLAG ON TOP OF BUILDING EXTERIOR OF GOVERNMENT BUILDING (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) LEBANESE PRIME MINISTER TAMMAM SALAM SAYING: "There are no political solutions with (the extremists) who are tampering with Arab societies under oppressive, alien religious slogans, and who want to move sick pract
  • Embargoed: 19th August 2014 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Lebanon
  • Country: Lebanon
  • Topics: Crime,General,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA9GTBS5HD5BCLWTXH4Z7DF19S7
  • Story Text: The Lebanese government said on Monday (August 4) there would be no political deal with Sunni militants who attacked the border town of Arsal at the weekend in the worst spillover from Syria's three-year-old civil war.
    "There are no political solutions with (the extremists) who are tampering with Arab societies under oppressive, alien religious slogans, and who want to move sick practices to Lebanon," Prime Minister Tammam Salam said in a televised statement read at the end of a cabinet meeting.
    Salam, the most senior Sunni figure in the Lebanese government, said the only solution was for the militants to withdraw from Arsal. The government had decided to mobilise all state institutions to defend the country, Salam -- flanked by the entire cabinet -- added.
    Meanwhile Lebanese army arrived in Arsal in Monday, and said it had taken full control of a school that militants had seized during the incursion, in a statement. The army also evacuated Syrian refugees from the town.
    Thick plumes of black and grey smoke billowed from the tops of the hills where Arsal lies. Intermittent bursts of gunfire could be heard from the surrounding areas as troops moved in.
    A dozen armoured personnel carriers were seen advancing towards the town, together with a similar number of other military vehicles including trucks and Humvees. Soldiers armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades sat atop the vehicles as they moved along the main road towards Arsal.
    Arsal is a mainly Sunni town located on the Lebanese side of the border between Syrian government-controlled territory and Lebanese Shi'ite areas sympathetic to Hezbollah.
    More than 100,000 Syrian refugees are estimated to be living in and around Arsal. Syrian activists in the area say refugee camps have been heavily damaged during the fighting.
    Two army trucks were seen bringing several dozen civilians including women in headscarves and young children out of Arsal.
    "Suddenly in the afternoon we heard gunfire, we went to the underground shelter and we stayed there, it started to escalate every 15 minutes then shelling started," one Syrian resident of Arsal, Khaled Abed Al Aziz said.
    "We had been home for three days and then gunfire started, we got stuck and then the (Lebanese) army got us out, we have not seen anything, we don't know where shelling is coming from, then the (Lebanese) army came, put us in their trucks and evacuated us, thanks to them," said another Syrian refugee, Jamal Ramadan.
    Lebanon, still rebuilding from its own 1975-1990 civil war, has been buffeted by violence linked to the Syrian conflict including rocket attacks, suicide bombings and gun battles.
    But this was the first major incursion by hardline Sunni militants who have become leading players in Sunni-Shi'ite violence that has unfolded across the Levant, destabilising Lebanon by inflaming its own sectarian tensions.
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