Hizbollah making gains on Lebanon-Syria border —Nasrallah

BEIRUT — Hizbollah’s chief said Saturday his Shiite movement had expelled Syrian opposition fighters from most of Syria’s Qalamun region bordering Lebanon but the battle was not over. 

Hassan Nasrallah, in a televised speech, said the battle in the mountainous area was “ongoing in terms of time and place,” but that Hizbollah had dealt “resounding defeats” to rebels there.

Hizbollah and the Syrian regime have “kicked out the armed groups from the battlefield, retaking control of 300 kilometres of territory”, Nasrallah said. 

He dismissed reports that Hizbollah had lost dozens of fighters in the battle, saying 13 had been killed. 

The Qalamun region straddles the Syria-Lebanon border and was a stronghold of rebel forces until a major operation by Syrian regime troops backed by Hizbollah fighters last year.

While most of the region was recaptured, opposition militants and jihadists remain entrenched in the area along the porous and ill-defined border.

From there, jihadists have launched attacks inside Lebanon, including in August 2014 when fighters from Al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate Al Nusra Front and the Daesh group briefly overran the eastern Lebanese town of Arsal.

As they withdrew from Arsal, the groups took several dozen Lebanese security forces with them as hostages and remained hidden in the town’s outskirts.

“As long as the armed groups are present in Arsal’s outskirts and in the remaining parts of Qalamun... we cannot talk about full security,” Nasrallah said.

He said Hizbollah was fighting “from hill to hill, from valley to valley” to push back armed groups and that Lebanese border villages were safer as a result.