The head of lebanon’s Hezbollah movement announced on Wednesday that the powerful Shia militia had begun to fight the Islamic State jehadist group along the rugged Syrian-lebanese border. “The battle with Daesh in Qalamun has begun, in the eastern (mountain) chain and on the Syrian-lebanese border,” Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech, referring to ISIS by its Arabic acronym.
He said fierce clashes had left dozens of ISIS fighters dead, and that Hezbollah had lost men, without specifying a number. “They (ISIS) began the fighting, but we will continue the battle,” Nasrallah said. Hezbollah has intervened militarily in Syria on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad, saying it is protecting lebanon from the threat of jehadists in the neighbouring country.
ISIS has made a series of major gains in Syria and Iraq in recent months, one year after it declared an Islamic “caliphate” over areas under its control. Nasrallah vowed on Wednesday to see the fight with the jehadists through. “I assure you that defeat will come to these men. It’s a matter of time, and we are not in a hurry,” he said. Hezbollah’s official television station Al-Manar, which aired Nasrallah’s remarks, had earlier broadcast video footage of bodies lying on rocky terrain, saying they were ISIS fighters.
“These are fighters’ corpses and the spoils that the resistance (Hezbollah) has seized during clashes outside the town of Ras Baalbek,” a town near lebanon’s border with Syria, the channel said. Nasrallah said that Syria’s army and Hezbollah were in control of Qalamun’s major mountains and hills after defeating ISIS’s jehadist rival and Al-Qaeda’s Syria branch, Al-Nusra Front. The joint Hezbollah-Syrian army offensive to clear the border area of rebel militias began a month ago.