Baalbek, LEBANON (AFP)
Four Lebanese soldiers were killed and 15 others wounded when their patrol came under attack in the eastern Bekaa Valley Monday in an incident that seemed linked to tensions between local tribes and the army, security sources said.
The attack occurred in the Bekaa Valley near the Syrian border, a stronghold of the Shiite movement Hezbollah that has long been known as a fertile drug-producing region.
Last month, Lebanese troops killed a prominent drugs baron travelling in a stolen car after he refused to stop at an army checkpoint in the Bekaa valley.
The army has often come under attack in the deeply divided country, which has witnessed a spate of killings against prominent anti-Syrian figures in recent years.
Witnesses said a gang of men opened fire with machine-guns and a rocket-propelled grenade on the military vehicle.
In Baalbek itself, friends and relatives of the slain drug baron, Ali Abbas Jaafar, fired celebratory gunshots into the air, an AFP correspondent said.
Ali Abbas Jaafar, who had 172 outstanding arrest warrants against him, was killed in late March along with an aide outside Baalbek. |
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Bekaa Valley Historically known as Lebanon's breadbasket, the Bekaa Valley was the hub of illegal drug production, chiefly hashish, during the 1975-1990 civil war.
The multi-billion-dollar industry was halted under pressure from the United States after the civil war, but the number of cannabis plantations mushroomed over the past two years amid political unrest.
Last September, four soldiers and three civilians were killed when an explosion ripped through a military bus in the northern port city of Tripoli. A similar attack in mid-August killed 14 people, including nine soldiers and a child.
The army also fought a 15-week battle with the al-Qaeda-inspired Fatah al-Islam militia in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared near Tripoli that left 400 people dead, including 168 soldiers, in 2007. |
