Lebanon’s president on Monday ordered troops to retaliate for gunfire from the Syrian side of the border after deadly fighting erupted overnight along the tense frontier and as more was reported on Monday.

“What is happening along the eastern and northeastern border cannot continue and we will not accept that it continues,” Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun said on X. “I have given my orders to the Lebanese army to retaliate against the source of fire.”

Aoun added that he asked Lebanon’s foreign minister, who is currently in Brussels for a donors conference on Syria, to contact Syrian officials to resolve the problem “and prevent further escalation.”

The fighting occurred after Syria’s interim government accused operatives from Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group of crossing into Syria on Saturday, abducting three soldiers and killing them on Lebanese soil.

It was the most serious cross-border fighting since the ouster of longtime Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in December.

State-run Syrian News Channel, citing an unnamed Defense Ministry official, said the Syrian army shelled “Hezbollah gatherings that killed Syrian soldiers” along the border. Hezbollah denied involvement........

© The Times of Israel