Syria orders Lebanese village to evacuate

The mayor of Lebanese eastern border village Tfail said Saturday, that the Syrian army ordered residents to evacuate in 48 hours before the military shells the tiny mountainous enclave.

"I received a phone call from someone from the Syrian army who told me that the remaining residents have until Sunday to evacuate the village," Ali Ashoum told The Daily Star.

Ashoum said Syria troops as well as members of Hezbollah had surrounded the village.

Media reports said the Syrian army was preparing to storm the village in search of gunmen, but Ashoum said only 12 families remained in the village.

Dozens of families fled Tfail earlier this summer because of heavy shelling by the Syrian military. Most of the Lebanese refugees travelled via smuggling routes through Syria to reach the northeastern Lebanese town of Arsal, some 35 kilometres away from Tfail.

Tfail is located east of Brital, on a slice of land separated from the rest of Lebanon by the Eastern Mountain range and surrounded on three sides by Syria. The rugged terrain made it difficult for residents to connect to the rest of the country, forcing them to buy supplies from Syria.

The predominantly Sunni village is home to some 3,000 Lebanese residents and 5,000 Syrian refugees who have settled there in recent months.

Residents in the village called on the government to deploy Lebanese troops into Tfail to protect them, local media said.

The government, in close coordination with Hezbollah, was able to send food and medical supply into Tfail earlier this year after the village came under siege as a result of ongoing clashes between Syrian soldiers and rebel groups.

Syria conflict spillover

Lebanon has officially sought to distance itself from the conflict in neighbouring Syria that began in March 2011, espousing a policy of "dissociation".

But the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has crept continually across the border, inflaming existing sectarian and political tensions.

There are more than one million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, testing the limited resources of the country, as well as the patience of its four million citizens.

And the country's powerful Shiite Hezbollah movement has openly intervened in the Syrian conflict, dispatching fighters to bolster regime troops against the Sunni-dominated uprising.

Majority-Sunni Arsal is broadly sympathetic to the uprising against Assad's regime, and has regularly been bombed by Syrian regime troops who say they are targeting opposition fighters holed up in the area.

On Monday, the Syrian foreign ministry issued a statement expressing its "support and solidarity with the Lebanese army as it faces terrorist groups."

The violence in the eastern Lebanese region began on Saturday afternoon, after soldiers detained a Syrian man, Imad Ahmed Jumaa, who the army said confessed belonging to Al-Qaeda's Syria affiliate, Al-Nusra Front.

Militants angered by the arrest opened fire on army checkpoints and stormed a police station, killing two civilians and capturing several police.