Taher Abu Hamdan
AFP
HALWA, Lebanon — Clashes broke out on Wednesday between the Lebanese army and pro-Syrian Palestinian guerrillas near the Syrian border, wounding two people, and a soldier was detained for several hours, police said.
The soldier, Khaled Ibrahim, was snatched and then freed by guerrillas of the Damascus-based group Fatah-Intifada, which is founded by a Palestinian militant known as Abu Mussa, they said.
Abu Fadi Hammad, the Lebanon representative of Abu Mussa’s group, said that one guerrilla was wounded in the clashes and that the detained soldier had been handed back to the army.
A senior army official said that a soldier was also wounded in the fighting in Wadi Al Asswad village of eastern Lebanon as troops and militants traded fire with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.
The army, in a statement, said that troops retaliated after coming under fire from "Palestinian elements" during a patrol near "a newly set up position". Soldiers later dismantled the post and confiscated equipment, it said.
The statement did not mention the kidnapping but said that one soldier was "gravely wounded" in the clashes.
A number of armed pro-Syrian Palestinian groups maintain bases in Lebanon, where an estimated 400,000 Palestinian refugees live.
On Tuesday Lebanese leaders held a new round of reconciliation talks that reached an agreement in April on a number of contentious issues, including the dismantling of Palestinian bases in Lebanon within six months.
The army last summer cordoned off Palestinian bases in eastern Lebanon for a month after an army topographer was killed by shots fired from the bases.
In January two Lebanese policemen were wounded while on patrol near a base of the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, led by Ahmed Jebril.
France, the United States and Britain last week submitted a draft UN Security Council resolution calling for full Syrian compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 1559 that demands the disarming of all militias in Lebanon.
Syria, which backs several radical factions with bases in Lebanon, withdrew its troops from its smaller neighbor last year after a 29-year military presence and political domination.
Ties between Beirut and Damascus have been strained since the withdrawal, which came in the face of strong international pressure following the murder of ex-Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri for which Syria was widely blamed.