Hezbollah and rebels agree ceasefire at Lebanese-Syrian border/Ceasefire reached on Lebanon-Syria border, say reports

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Hezbollah and rebels agree ceasefire at Lebanese-Syrian border
Reuters, Beirut Thursday, 27 July 2017

A ceasefire took effect on Thursday in a mountainous area of the Lebanese-Syrian border where Lebanon’s Hezbollah says it is on the verge of defeating Nusra Front militants in their last foothold at the frontier. The ceasefire began at 6 a.m. (0300 GMT), halting fighting on all fronts in areas near the Lebanese frontier town of Arsal where Hezbollah launched its assault on Nusra Front militants on Friday, a military news service run by Hezbollah reported. A source familiar with negotiations, brokered by a Lebanese internal security agency, said the remaining Nusra Front fighters were willing to accept safe passage to Syria’s rebel-held Idlib and talks were continuing to agree the route they would take.
Release of fighters
The news service of Hezbollah, a Shi’ite Muslim group, said the ceasefire deal included the release of five of its fighters held by the Sunni Muslim Nusra Front in Syria. The head of Lebanon’s main security apparatus said the ceasefire deal would be “completed … within days.” “The militants and those civilians who wish to will depart for Idlib in an organized fashion under the supervision of the Lebanese state,” Major General Abbas Ibrahim said, quoted by Lebanon’s National News Agency. The Lebanese Red Cross will be involved in the logistics, he said. On the issue of the release of Hezbollah fighters by the militants, Ibrahim said: “The agreement is to clear Lebanese territory (of insurgents). Whoever benefits from that, there is no obstacle.”In a speech late on Wednesday, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said talks had begun between Lebanese officials and the Nusra Front on Tuesday.
Nasrallah said on Wednesday his group was close to defeating the Nusra Front militants, saying they had “effectively lost” most of the land they held in the barren, mountainous border region known as Jroud Arsal.
Deaths
Security sources say some two dozen Hezbollah fighters have been killed overall, and nearly 150 militants. ISIS militants in an adjacent area of the border zone are expected to be targeted in the next phase of the operation unless they agree to withdraw. The Nusra Front was al-Qaeda’s official wing in the Syrian war until last year when it formally severed ties to the global militant network and rebranded itself. It now fights as part of the Tahrir al-Sham Islamist alliance, which it dominates. Hezbollah has played a major role in fighting militants in the border region during Syria’s six-year-old civil war in support of President Bashar al-Assad. The Arsal region witnessed one of the most serious spillovers of the Syrian civil war into Lebanon when the Nusra Front and ISIS militants briefly overran the town of Arsal, abducting dozens of Lebanese soldiers and policemen.
ISIS is still holding nine Lebanese soldiers captured at that time. Their fate is unknown.

Ceasefire reached on Lebanon-Syria border, say reports
Middle East Eye/July 27/17/The ceasefire comes a week after Hezbollah launched an offensive against the militants in the Arsal border region
Fighting between Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and a former al-Qaeda affiliate on the Syria-Lebanon border halted Thursday after a ceasefire was reached, Lebanese media and Hezbollah outlets reported. The ceasefire comes a week after the powerful Shia militant group launched an offensive against the militants in the mountainous Jurud Arsal border region. Hezbollah’s “War Media” outlet said “a ceasefire that began at 6:00 am (0300 GMT) is in effect on all the front in Jurud Arsal.” Lebanon’s official National News Agency said the ceasefire was part of a deal brokered by the country’s general security agency chief Major General Abbas Ibrahim. Under the deal, remaining fighters from the former al-Qaeda affiliate once known as Al-Nusra Front will withdraw from the region. Al-Nusra Front was previously al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, before renouncing that status last year and rebranding itself Fateh al-Sham Front.
“The Al-Nusra fighters and their families will go to Idlib,” a province in northwestern Syria largely under the control of the militants, NNA said. It said Ibrahim was expected to release a statement on the deal later on Thursday. In a speech on Wednesday, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said “serious” negotiations were underway to secure the withdrawal of Al-Nusra militants. “There are two paths: the battlefield and the negotiations. Both are open,” he said. After Arsal: Hezbollah’s new triangle of influence. He had said his fighters were on the cusp of “a great military victory”, and had surrounded the remaining Al-Nusra fighters in a small pocket of territory. Security in Jurud Arsal has been a concern for many years. The barren and mountainous border area has served as a hideout for militants, who in 2014 clashed with Lebanese security forces in the area. Tens of thousands of Syrian refugees live in the town of Arsal, adjacent to the border region, while an unknown number are also thought to have been sheltering in the surrounding mountains. Lebanon’s army has not officially declared its participation in the operation, but has shelled “terrorists” in the area. It has also been involved in operations to transport civilians out of the battle zone and into the town of Arsal. In his speech on Wednesday, Nasrallah said his fighters were willing to hand over the territory they have secured to Lebanese troops. But the group’s fighters told journalists in Jurud Arsal on Wednesday that the next phase of the battle to secure the region was still ahead. They said Islamic State group fighters still hold parts of Jurud Arsal and the area around two border towns, but anticipated an easy victory. “It won’t be a difficult task. Its fighters are only a few hundred and spread out in this vast territory,” one commander said confidently.