Spillover from Syria to Lebanon gets larger

From Now Lebanon:

A Syrian army helicopter bombed the eastern Beqaa town of Arsal again yesterday afternoon. This time they aimed at the center of the town, located in a valley of the Anti-Lebanon mountain range a few kilometers away from the Syrian border.

It was the latest episode in a series of incidents that raise concern that a new front may emerge in the Lebanese Beqaa Valley, especially after Syrian regime forces and Hezbollah-trained fighters have recently pushed the rebels out of Qusayr, a former rebel stronghold. Analysts say that a war in the Beqaa is imminent.

Arsal has been bombed by the Syrian air force in August last year, but no inhabited areas were hit then. Most of the military operations took place in the farmlands straddling the border, as the Syrian army officially said that they were following rebel fighters who had crossed into Lebanon. For the people in Arsal, a Sunni enclave on the border with Syria surrounded by Hezbollah-controlled areas, bombing the inhabited areas was a long time coming. Since the beginning of the Syrian uprising, the town has earned a reputation for sheltering Syrian refugees and anti-regime activists, and its farmlands have been reportedly used as a safe haven by rebel fighters.

Arsal’s support for the Syrian rebellion has brought the town to an open war with neighboring Hermel, a region controlled by Shiite Hezbollah (which is involved in the Syrian conflict alongside the regime’s loyalist forces). On Tuesday, a resident of Arsal was killed and another two were briefly kidnapped while passing through Hezbollah’s territory. Politically motivated tit-for-tat kidnappings have occured quite often between the inhabitants of the two towns during the past year.

And:

A video posted on YouTube shows a group of Jihadists announcing the formation of a brigade to fight Hezbollah in the Lebanese Beqaa Valley region.

“Following the call for Jihad in Syria made by the Ulamas of [Islam], we announce the formation of the Lebanese Shield of Beqaa Battalion to fight Hezbollah,” a masked gunman is shown as saying in the video broadcast on Sunday.

He added that the battalion will include four companies “spread across the Beqaa.”

The Beqaa Valley region has been targeted recently by rocket attacks from Syria hitting the Sunni majority town of Arsal, as well as Baalbek, a bastion of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah.

And:

Four Shiite Lebanese men were killed Sunday in an ambush in a volatile area by the border with Syria, hiking already high sectarian tensions and concerns over the spillover of the civil war raging next door.

Gunmen from the families of the slain Shiites took to the streets and set up roadblocks between their town and the neighboring Sunni majority town of Arsal, accusing residents there of being behind the killings.

Lebanon is being sucked back into "Greater Syria" to help create a greater Syrian mess.