A crowd of locals arrested several passengers on a bus crossing the Bab al-Tabbaneh district of Tripoli in northern Lebanon on Saturday night. According to some sources, the people arrested, who were immediately handed over to the army, were Syrian soldiers of the ousted Assad regime, while others were civilians. The incident occurred at around midnight, near the Abou Ali bridge in Tripoli, reported our correspondent in the north, Michel Hallak.

The Internal Security Forces (ISF) announced on Sunday that it ambushed two Hyundai vans in Halba (Akkar) and arrested two drivers and 25 Syrians for entering Lebanon "illegally."

"The legal requirements were taken against the detainees and they were handed over to the concerned authority, based on the instruction of the competent judiciary," the statement reads.

According to the statement, the ISF ordered to intensify the surveillance of routes where smuggling operations are active in order to arrest those involved in them.

In Maloula, at the northern entrance of Tripoli, a Lebanese Army force managed to arrest a number of Syrians who entered Lebanese territory through illegal crossings and were on their way to Beirut, according to our correspondent in the North. Some of those detained are members of the Syrian army in the former regime,

Investigations are ongoing under the supervision of the competent judiciary, paving the way for legal action to be taken against them.

Bab al-Tabbaneh is a Sunni-majority neighborhood that was, between 2011 and 2014, at the start of the war in Syria, at the heart of clashes with residents of the neighboring Jabal Mohsen neighborhood, which is Alawite-majority and allied with the former Damascus regime.

According to information from our correspondent and videos of the incident, dozens of youths stopped the bus and took off several passengers, identified as “deserter soldiers,” and “badly manhandled” them before handing them over to the Lebanese Army. These were soldiers from the Fourth Division, led by Bashar al-Assad's brother Maher, who spearheaded the repression of the 2011 revolution, who had entered Lebanon illegally via the northern border and were on their way to Beirut.

Lying in Bab al-Tabbaneh

A security source confirmed that “the case is ongoing.” “For the time being, initial indications are that the civilians did indeed enter Lebanon illegally,” she added, without giving any further details on their identity or the outcome of their arrest.

After the incident, Bab al-Tabbaneh and the surrounding area erupted in jubilation and a march was organized, during which the inhabitants chanted slogans in support of the Syrian revolution, reviling the deposed Syrian regime and affirming their determination to arrest all the soldiers who had fled to Lebanon, according to our correspondent. Also in North Lebanon, in Minyeh, young people arrested a Syrian soldier belonging to the Assad regime and handed him over to the army.

On Saturday, the Internal Security Forces announced in a press release that they had intercepted a truck carrying dozens of people who had entered Lebanon illegally in the Berbara sector, near the town of Jbeil, between Beirut and Tripoli. They were then handed over to the Syrian authorities via the Arida border crossing in Northern Lebanon. This was the first security cooperation between Lebanon and the new Syrian authorities. Some of them were soldiers and officers, according to our correspondent.