Hezbollah fighter killed in Syrian conflict

A Hizbullah member was killed in the ongoing battles in the neighboring country Syria, media reports said on Saturday.

According to MTV, Mohammed Asaad died recently in the clashes in Syria as European Union foreign ministers are set to discuss on Monday fears over Hizbullah’s involvement in the battles.

Hizbullah has announced several burials in past months, without elaborating on the circumstances of its members’ deaths.

The opposition March 14 camp and Syrian rebels have repeatedly accused Hizbullah of aiding the regime of President Bashar Assad militarily.

Syria’s conflict that erupted in March 2011, is believed to have killed more than 70,000 people.

On Monday, Syria’s main opposition National Coalition called on Lebanon to control its frontiers, after rebels said they fired across the border in retaliation against Hizbullah.

The party has systematically denied sending fighters into Syria, although its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged in October 2012 that party members had fought Syrian rebels but said they were acting as individuals and not under the group’s direction.

In recent months, fighting has raged in and around several towns and villages inhabited by a community of some 15,000 Lebanese Shiites who have lived for decades on the Syrian side of a frontier that is not clearly demarcated in places and not fully controlled by border authorities. They are mostly Lebanese citizens, though some have dual citizenship or are Syrian.

Before Syria’s uprising erupted two years ago, tens of thousands of Lebanese lived in Syria.

Naharnet