Residents at Lebanese-Syrian border call for army protection

Sep 17, 2011, 16:30 GMT

Beirut - Residents living near Lebanon's northern border with Syria called Saturday on the Lebanese army to deploy more troops in the area to protect them from Syrian fire.

The call came two days after Syrian troops fired on the area of Kenayseh and wounded one Lebanese civilian. The Syrians said they had mistakenly fired on the civilians, thinking were Syrian defectors.

Although calm had returned to the Lebanese-Syrian border, residents were afraid that such incidents would recur, especially as Syrian troops were continuing their wide-scale search for defectors fleeing into Lebanon to escape the crackdown by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Nonetheless, Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour said Saturday Lebanon will not approve of any UN Security Council resolution that condemns Syria.

'Russia will not accept a resolution, the way the West wants it, against Syria,' Mansour, who is a pro-Syrian and have close links with the Lebanese Shiite movement, Hezbollah, told Sawt al-Mada radio station.

Russia has continued to support the Syrian regime and refused to support Western sanctions against al-Assad, their last ally in the region.

Lebanon last month dissociated itself from a statement by the Security Council condemning Syria's President Bashar al-Assad for unleashing a fierce campaign against civilians and violating human rights.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's troops have cracked down on protests against almost five decades of Baath Party rule which broke out mid-March, killing over 2,600 people according to the UN Human Rights Committee, and triggering a series of sanctions by the US and the EU.

Mansour described the situation in Syria as 'better than how it was six months ago.'

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in its weekly statement that the number of registered Syrian refugees in north Lebanon had increased in the last two weeks, from 2,898 at the end of August, to 3,580 by September 14.

The report stated that, in the past two weeks, new arrivals had come mostly from the Syrian towns of Heet and Tal Kalakh, in the Homs governate, as violence has flared up in those areas.

The report stated that the fleeing Syrians had been using the legal crossing with Lebanon, since 'the unofficial crossing points are reportedly heavily guarded by the Syrian authorities.'

It added that some of the refugees were now living in public schools in northern Lebanon.

The violence has prompted thousands of Syrians to seek a safe haven in neighboring countries such as Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.

Lebanon's ambassador to the UN, Nawaf Salam, will preside over Security Council meetings during September. Lebanon's President Michel Suleiman is also due to address the UN General Assembly on September 21.

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