Truce in Lebanon border battle

The truce, which came into force at 7 p.m. (1600 UTC), was meant to allow time to evacuate the wounded and to negotiate on the release of captured soldiers and security personnel, a senior Lebanese security official told Reuters news agency.

The source said the ceasefire was broken briefly late in the evening when an army position came under fire, but the truce held nonetheless.

The ceasefire has apparently been brokered by Sunni Muslim clerics that have been mediating in the fighting between the Lebanese army and Islamist extremists from Syria, who seized the border town of Asral at the weekend.

The clashes have so far killed 17 soldiers and wounded dozens more. At least 22 soldiers and an unknown number of policemen have been declared missing; it's considered possible that the militants are holding some or all of them hostage.

The Islamists earlier released three policemen they had been holding in an apparent gesture of goodwill.

It is unclear how many militants and civilians have been killed, but reports by security forces and medics indicate that the death toll may be in the dozens.

Officials have identified the militants as members of the Nusra Front - al Qaeda's branch in Syria - and the "Islamic State," formerly known as ISIS, which has seized large areas of Iraq and Syria.

Dangerous spillover

The clashes in the predominantly Sunni Muslim town of Arsal began on Saturday when Lebanese forces arrested a Syrian Islamist commander. Shortly after the arrest, gunmen attacked security forces in the area.

It is the first major incursion into Lebanon by mostly Sunni rebels fighting on the other side of the border to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad, and raises fears that the bloody Syrian civil conflict could spill over into its neighbor.

In another possible sign that the Syrian troubles could be spreading further into Lebanon, gunmen opened fire on Tuesday morning at a bus carrying soldiers in the northern Lebanese port city of Tripoli, wounding seven, the army said. Tripoli is close to the Syrian border and has seen sporadic violence over the past two years. Other fighting in the city overnight killed a young girl and injured four others.

tj/msh (AP, Reuters, AFP)