Syrian pro-government soldiers moving in the village of Dahret Abed Rabbo in Al Layramun area in Aleppo province, yesterday.
BEIRUT: Two rockets hit Hezbollah’s heartland in Beirut yesterday as the Lebanese Shia group battled alongside Syrian regime forces and Damascus said it agreed “in principle” to attend a Geneva peace conference.
The early morning attack came as Syria’s fractured opposition held an unscheduled fourth day of meetings on the peace conference proposal and after Hezbollah pledged to fight for “victory” in Syria over the rebels.
Its chief Hassan Nasrallah said it was in the militant anti-Israeli group’s own interest to defend President Bashar Al Assad’s regime. “I have always promised you a victory and now I pledge to you a new one” in Syria, he said.
Hours later, two Grad rockets slammed into Al Shayyah area of southern Beirut, a security source said, wounding four Syrian workers at a car dealership.
It was the first time the Lebanese capital’s mainly Shiite southern suburbs have been targeted during the more than two-year-old conflict in Syria. A photographer said the second rocket damaged an apartment block.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack which Interior Minister Marwan Charbel denounced as “sabotage”.
“We hope that what is happening in Syria will not spill over into Lebanon,” he said.
During the past week, 31 people have been killed in clashes in Lebanon’s northern port of Tripoli between supporters and opponents of Syria’s regime.
The army found two abandoned rocket launchers in Aitat, southeast of Beirut’s southern suburbs, the security source said.
“The people will not be intimidated by such acts and are determined to defend the resistance (Hezbollah)... We will prevent all sectarian dissent,” Hezbollah MP Ali Ammar said.
With the violence in Syria raging and spreading, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said his government would attend “in principle” the Geneva peace conference Washington and Moscow are hoping to hold next month.
“We think... that the international conference represents a good opportunity for a political solution to the crisis in Syria,” Muallem said.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, meanwhile, said Paris would host today a meeting with Russia and the US to prepare for the conference.
Also today, EU foreign ministers were to meet in Brussels with the bloc deeply divided over whether to arm rebels in Syria, ahead of the expiry at midnight Friday of sanctions against the country, including an arms embargo. Fabius condemned the Beirut rocket attacks, saying it was crucial to “avoid the war in Syria becoming a war in Lebanon”. Jordan, which shares borders with Syria and hosts more than 500,000 Syrian refugees, said it is in talks “with friendly countries” to deploy Patriot missiles on its territory after a similar move by Turkey.
AFP
