Source : LBCI News
Three Lebanese Armed Forces' soldiers were killed on Tuesday after unknown assailants opened fire at them at 3 am at dawn in the region of Wadi Hmeid on the outskirts of Arsal.
The LAF took airtight measures in the region in order to identify the assailants who escaped towards an unknown direction.
In this regard, a security source told LBCI that the soldiers' checkpoint in Arsal was stormed with a Hummer, their arms were seized, they were then beaten and shot in their heads, adding that the rest of LAF soldiers in the military checkpoint opened fire at the five assailants, but they managed to escape.
A military source also told LBCI that most of the assailants who opened fire at LAF soldiers are Syrian nationals.
This as schools and shops in the town of Arsal closed their doors in protest of the heinous attack that targeted the soldiers.
It is not the first time the LAF soldiers fall victim to the Arsal violence. LAF troops were ambushed in Arsal on Friday February 1st, 2013, while trying to detain fugitive, Khaled Hmeid, suspected of involvement in the 2011 kidnapping of seven Estonian tourists who were abducted in Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley and held for nearly four months before being released in July that year.
Khaled Hmeid was injured in the raid and subsequently succumbed to his wounds. Shortly after his capture around 80 gunmen adamant on avenging Hmeid's capture followed the LAF troops who reportedly were stuck on the road leading out of the town due to the accumulation of snow. The gunmen attacked the troops leaving Major Pierre Bachaalany and Adjutant Ibrahim Zahraman for dead. The two were then taken alongside the remaining injured troops to the towns municipality and paraded in a show of celebration.
