View of Syria from a house in Qanafez in the Hermel, on Feb. 13, 2025. (Credit: Matthieu Karam/L’Orient-Le Jour)
Clashes broke out Monday night between the Syrian Abu Jabal clan and members of the Syrian army in the Syrian village of al-Masriya, on the border with Lebanon, according to information from L'Orient-Le Jour's correspondent in the region. The clashes took place exclusively in Syrian territory.
The gunfire, which caused several injuries, could be heard as far as Lebanon, in border areas around Hermel, for a little over an hour, as confirmed by a former member of the municipal council of the Lebanese border village of Qasr.
The fall of the Assad regime in December 2024 triggered a spike in violence on Lebanon's northeastern border with Syria, between Lebanese clans and Syrian forces. These tensions have not reoccurred since the Lebanese Army intervened in the region on March 17 and the cease-fire that took effect that same evening.
In Syria, restoring security across the country is the most urgent challenge for the new government under President Ahmad Al-Sharaa. In March, in the Alawite stronghold on the Syrian coast, massacres killed around 1,700 people, mostly Alawite civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). In the south of the country as well, a week of deadly violence beginning July 12 between Druze and Bedouin tribes, which escalated with the intervention of government forces who backed the Bedouin, killed more than 1,400, mostly Druze, according to SOHR.
