Syrian troops said to enter northern Lebanon; Muslim Brotherhood issues statement

May 2, 2011

NICOSIA — The Syrian Army has begun to enter neighboring Lebanon as part of efforts to quell the revolt against the regime of President Bashar Assad.

Opposition sources said Syrian troops have been seen in northern Lebanon in pursuit of alleged Islamic insurgents. They said the Syrian Army has been deployed on both sides of the border in an effort to stop people from fleeing to Lebanon.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood issued a rare statement: "You were born free, so don't let a tyrant enslave you."

"Syrians escaping oppression in Latakia and Banias are heading to Wadi Khalid considered a no-man's land in Lebanon," the opposition Reform Party of Syria said.

The Washington-based RPS did not say how many Syrians fled to northern Lebanon, Middle East Newsline reported. But the opposition group said Syrian troops already entered the territory of their eastern neighbor in search for anti-Assad activists.

"Unless the Lebanese media heads to the region to cover why the Syrian army is on Lebanese soil, RPS expects a large scale massacre in this remote region," the opposition group, regarded as authoritative, said.

This was believed to have marked the first Syrian Army incursion into Lebanon since Assad's troops withdrew from that country in 2005. Damascus retains a huge intelligence presence among the more than 1.2 million Syrian laborers in Lebanon.

The Assad regime has confirmed that the Army was searching border areas for what it called "armed terrorist gangs." Officials said Syrian troops were hunting for anti-Assad fighters along the borders of Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. They said a Syrian Army outpost near the Jordanian border was captured by unidentified fighters.

"We stress that the number of the Army and police martyrs reached 78, and the number of civilians reached 70 since the eruption of the mercenary violence that targeted the safety of citizens and homeland," a Syrian military source told the official Sana news agency.

The revolt has spread to most major cities in Syria but appeared strongest in Dera, near the Jordanian border, where thousands of Syrian troops and scores of main battle tanks were deployed. Nearly 300 people have been killed by Syrian Army and police fire in Dera since March.