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Encroaching Syrian Conflict Pits Hezbollah Against Jabhat al-Nusra

Border villages of Hezbollah-backed Shiites sympathetic to Assad are clashing with the Sunni Jabhat al-Nusra, reports an Al-Monitor correspondent in Beirut.

Lebanon's Hezbollah members carry the coffin of a Hezbollah member during his funeral in Ansar village near  Baalbek city October 8, 2012. Hezbollah gave no details about their deaths but sources in Baalbek said they and another Hezbollah man were killed near a Syrian border town where rebels are fighting Assad's forces. REUTERS/Ahmed Shalha    (LEBANON - Tags: CIVIL UNREST POLITICS) - RTR38X93
Lebanon's Hezbollah members carry the coffin of a Hezbollah member reportedly killed in border town fighting, at his funeral in Ansar village near Baalbek city, Oct. 8, 2012. — REUTERS/Ahmed Shalha

Three months ago, Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah warned that the West is indirectly attracting al-Qaeda members to Syria to be killed there, thus achieving two significant goals by weakening the Syrian regime and creating a genocide for al-Qaeda.

But there are those who believe that Nasrallah has fallen into the trap set up for al-Qaeda by the West and led by Washington.

Almost a month ago, Hezbollah slipped further into the gravitational pull of Syria's internal war. Almost daily, the body of at least one Hezbollah member fighting in Syria along with the Syrian regime was being returned to Lebanese Shiite villages in the South and in the Bekaa valley.

Information indicates that about 35 Hezbollah members have been thus far killed in Syria. They died in the Homs countryside, Zabadani — near the Lebanese border — and in the area of Sayyida Zeinab, which is located in the countryside south of Damascus.

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