BEIRUT: The Lebanese army said yesterday it had arrested five Syrian men found with explosives and suspected of planning an attack on a Shias procession on Sunday.
The war in neighbouring Syria, pitting majority Sunni Muslim rebels against President Bashar Al Assad’s inner circle of Alawites - an offshoot of Shia - has widened rifts in Lebanon, still politically divided along sectarian lines deepened by its own 15-year civil war.
Lebanon’s Shia militant group Hezbollah has sided with Assad and anger is growing among Sunnis and other groups sympathetic to the Syrian opposition.
The arrests in the southern town of Nabatiyeh followed an army raid on a house where 450 grammes of explosives were discovered, the army said. The men were believed to have been planning to attack a procession in the town on Sunday to mark the Shia festival of Ashura.
“The five Syrians have been living in Lebanon for years. They are thought to have been planning an attack on Shias,” a source said on condition of anonymity Reuters
