WRAPUP 2-Lebanon kidnap sparks fears of Syria spillover

August 16, 2012|Reuters

* Five Gulf states tell citizens to quit Lebanon

* Retaliatory kidnappings raise sectarian spectre over

* Syria air strike kills 30, UN probe finds "war crimes"

* U.N. says 2.5 million Syrians need aid

By Dominic Evans and Hadeel Al Shalchi

BEIRUT/ALEPPO, Aug 16 (Reuters) - Gulf Arab states began
evacuating their citizens from Lebanon on Thursday after
kidnappings linked to Syria's civil war showed violence has
begun to spread across a region torn by sectarian divisions.

Lebanese Shi'ite gunmen seized more than 20 people in an
area of Beirut run by Hezbollah, a group backed by Syrian ally
Iran, and said they were holding citizens of Turkey and Saudi
Arabia, key backers of Syria's mainly Sunni Muslim insurgency.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and
Bahrain all told their nationals to leave at once. Some nations
have already begun flying their citizens home.

The kidnappers' threat to take more Saudi, Turkish and
Qatari hostages to secure the release of a kinsman held by
Syrian rebels in Damascus bore ominous echoes of Lebanon's own,
long civil war - and Arab governments lost no time in urging
visitors to leave Beirut's popular summer tourist haunts.

"The snowball will grow," warned Hatem al-Meqdad, a senior
member of the powerful Lebanese Shi'ite Meqdad family who said
his brother was detained by the Free Syrian Army two days ago.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose Alawite minority is
an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, has long relied on support from
Shi'ite Iran and its Hezbollah allies. He accuses the Sunni
powers of the Gulf and Turkey of promoting the revolt against
him, which grew out of Arab Spring demonstrations 18 months ago.

While his opponents, and the Western powers which sympathise
with them, insist they want to avoid the kind of sectarian
blood-letting seen in Iraq, rebels who mostly come from Syria's
disadvantaged Sunni majority have seized Iranians and Lebanese
there in recent weeks, saying they may be working for Assad.


On Wednesday, the Meqdad clan said it was holding more than
20 people, including a Saudi, a Turkish businessman and several
Syrians they described as anti-Assad fighters. Its action was a
blow to a Lebanese economy for which Gulf tourists have played a
part in recovery after 15 years of civil war ended in 1990.

"We still haven't even done one percent; we still haven't
really moved," said a man who told reporters late on Wednesday
in Beirut's Hezbollah-controlled Dahiya district that he and his
fellow masked gunmen from the Meqdad clan's "military wing" were
ready to take more action against Syrian rebels in Lebanon.

The Turkish hostage told a Lebanese television channel he
was being treated well. Another station broadcast footage it
said showed two Syrian hostages in the custody of masked gunmen
from the Meqdad clan wearing fatigues and armed with rifles.

Air France diverted one of its planes away from Beirut on
Wednesday evening for "security reasons" after the kidnappings.
The road from the airport has regularly been blocked by
protesting families of Lebanese being held in Syria.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the
kidnappings, but his government seemed largely powerless to act.

"This brings us back to the days of the painful war, a page
that Lebanese citizens have been trying to turn," he said.

Fighting in Syria has triggered violence across the border
before - some of it linked to Syrian rebels bringing arms and
supplies across Lebanon.

But the round of hostage-taking on both sides adds a new
factor for regional states, who are advancing their strategic
interests while Russia and the West are deadlocked by their deep
divisions over Syria.

At a meeting in Saudi Arabia, the Organisation of Islamic
Cooperation suspended Syria on Thursday, citing Assad's
suppression of the Syrian revolt, but there was little support
for direct military involvement.

The 57-member body's rebuke is mostly symbolic, but it shows
Syria's isolation - as well as that of its ally Iran - across
much of the Sunni-majority Islamic world.

Against that backdrop, the bloodshed in Syria continues.


In Azaz, near the heavily contested northern economic hub of
Aleppo, bombing by Assad's air force killed 30 people, according
to a local doctor, and wounded scores more as buildings were
flattened. Among those hurt, a rebel commander said, were seven
Lebanese being held captive. A further four were missing.

Assad's forces have increasingly been using their air power
against the lightly armed insurgents - a tactic which featured
in fresh accusations of war crimes levelled by U.N. human rights
investigators on Wednesday.

They said rebels had also committed war crimes, but the
violations "did not reach the gravity, frequency and scale" of
those by state forces and the pro-Assad shabbiha militia.

Last month, Assad's troops successfully counter-attacked
after rebels seized parts of Damascus. They are still trying to
dislodge insurgents from Aleppo, Syria's biggest city.