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May 23rd, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
Fighting has grown increasingly violent around Damascus, Aleppo and northwest
Idlib, despite the presence of some 270 UN truce monitors on the ground.
The raging violence in Syria took a broader turn in the region after Lebanon’s
state news agency said Syrian rebels kidnapped 13 Lebanese Shiite Muslims as
they were headed home by bus from a pilgrimage in Iran.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Adnan Mansur said Wednesday that the pilgrims were
abducted by “a splinter group of the armed Syrian opposition”, but
added he expected their release “within hours.”
“According to information provided by an Arab country those kidnapped
will be free within hours,” Mansur told Al-Jadeed, a private satellite
television station.
The Free Syrian Army, which wants to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad’s
regime, strongly denied abducting the Lebanese pilgrims.
“The FSA is not at all responsible for the operation,” Mustafa
al-Sheikh, a high-ranking FSA officer, told AFP by telephone from Istanbul.
“This is an attempt to distort the image of the FSA. The FSA does not
believe in this methodology,” said Sheikh, the head of the group’s
military council.
Sheikh said the Syrian regime “treats the FSA as a scapegoat. We condemn
this abduction, which does not represent the values of the (Syrian)
revolution.”
The kidnapping “is no doubt the work of the regime, which wants to sow
chaos in the region,” Sheikh added.
Syria’s main opposition coalition also issued a call for the prompt release of
the group, adding that it too believed the Syrian regime could be involved
in the kidnapping.
The Syrian National Council “does not think it is impossible that the
regime is involved in this operation,” in order to sow “disorder”
in neighbouring Lebanon, the group said.
But Lebanese women pilgrims who arrived in Beirut early on Wednesday said the
kidnappers presented themselves as belonging to the FSA. “They
terrorised us,” said one of them.
The case has triggered fears of sectarian tensions in Lebanon over the revolt
in neighbouring Syria.
The news prompted their families and thousands of supporters to pour out into
the streets of Beirut’s mainly Shiite southern suburbs on Tuesday night to
demand their release.
Protesters blocked several roads, including the old airport road, with burning
tyres and garbage bins.
Lebanese Shiite leader Hassan Nasrallah, a strong ally of the embattled regime
in Damascus, appealed for calm and said his Shiite militant party was doing
its utmost to ensure the safe release of the men.
“I call on everyone to show restraint,” Nasrallah said in a
televised speech.
Nasrallah said contacts were underway with Syrian authorities and other
countries in the region for a quick resolution. “We will work day and
night until those beloved are back with us,” he vowed.
Lebanon’s northern Akkar region has also seen protests this week after the
weekend killings of two clerics at an army checkpoint in Akkar, a mainly
Sunni region whose inhabitants are hostile to Assad.
The killings ignited street battles in the capital Beirut on Monday that left
two people dead and 18 wounded.
Saudi King Abdullah on Tuesday voiced fear over the Sunni community in Lebanon
and urged action to avert a sectarian strife resulting from a spillover of
the Syria conflict.
The kingdom “follows with deep concerns the developments … especially
the targeting of one of the main sects of Lebanon,” he said in
reference to co-religionist Sunnis, the Saudi state news agency SPA reported.
He urged Lebanese President Michel Sleiman to act “due to the gravity of
the crisis and its potential to escalate into a sectarian conflict in
Lebanon, dragging it back into the spectre of civil war.”
Source: AFP
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