On the afternoon of Oct. 5, pitched battles took place between militants of the Islamic State (IS) and Jabhat al-Nusra and the Lebanese army and Hezbollah fighters in the center of Lebanon’s eastern border with Syria.
The battle began after Sunni fundamentalist gunmen tried to cross from Arsal’s barren lands, at the northeast corner of Lebanon, in a southerly direction toward the center. The new site of clashes is a densely populated Shiite area, adjacent to Brital and close to Baalbek, both considered Hezbollah strongholds.