Situs berita al-Manar melaporkan, Rabu (9 Desember) bahwa para pejuang Hizbollah menyerang konvoi kelompok al-Nusra Front yang tengah berjalan di jalan raya di luar kota Arsal, Lebanon. Kota itu sendiri berjarak sekitar 124 kilometer di sebelah timur laut ibukota Lebanon, Beirut.
"Para pejuang Hizbollah membidik konvoi Al-Nusra Front yang membawa komandannya, Abu Firas al-Jubbeh... setelah sebelumnya mengamati dengan seksama pergerakan konvoi itu," tulis Al Manar.
Dalam serangan itu Jubbeh langsung tewas bersama tiga pengawalnya. Lima orang anggota Al Nusra lainnya tewas ditembak ketika berusaha menolong Jubbeh. Tembak-menembak juga melibatkana tentara Lebanon yang juga mengincar kelompok al-Nusra di wilayah itu.
Al Nusra adalah organisasi di bawah Al Qaida yang menjadi bagian dalam pemberontakan di Suriah yang telah berlangsung sejak tahun 2011 dan menelan nyawa lebih dari 200 ribu warga Suriah.
Perkembangan ini menyusul diadakannya tukar-menukar tawanan antara tentara Lebanon dan kelompok Al Nusra seminggu sebelumnya. Kala itu Al Nusra membebaskan 16 polisi dan tentara yang ditangkap mereka, sementara pemerintah Lebanon membebaskan 13 anggota kelompok militan, termasuk Saja al-Dulaimi, mantan istri dari ketua kelompok ISIS Ibrahim al-Samarrai atau dikenal juga sebagai Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Tentara Lebanon dengan dibantu Hizbollah selama beberapa bulan terakhir meningkatkan operasi keamanan di sekitar Arsal, dimana diduga kuat ribuan anggota kelompok-kelompok militan yang bertempur di Suriah, menyembunyikan diri.
Selain harus menghadapi kelompok-kelompok militan teroris di negaranya, Lebanon, Hizbollah juga harus menghadapi kelompok yang sama, di Suriah. Bulan lalu Hizbollah berhasil membebaskan seorang pilot Rusia yang pesawatnya ditembak jatuh oleh Turki dekat perbatasan Turki-Suriah, melalui sebuah operasi rahasia yang menegangkan yang dipimpin oleh jendral legendaris Iran, Jendral Soleiman.(ca)
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TEHRAN (FNA)- Some time before 9/11, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, once the powerful Saudi ambassador in Washington and head of the Saudi intelligence until a few months ago, had a revealing and ominous conversation with the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove.
Prince Bandar told him: "The time is not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will be literally 'God help the Shiite'. More than a billion Sunnis have simply had enough of them."
According to Times of India newspaper, the fatal moment predicted by Prince Bandar may now have come for many Shiites, with Saudi Arabia playing an important role in bringing it about by supporting the anti-Shiite jihad in Iraq and Syria. Since the capture of Mosul by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on 10 June, Shiite women and children have been killed in villages South of Kirkuk, and Shiite air force cadets machine-gunned and buried in mass graves near Tikrit.
In Mosul, Shiite shrines and mosques have been blown up, and in the nearby Shiite Turkoman city of Tal Afar 4,000 houses have been taken over by ISIL fighters as "spoils of war". Simply to be identified as Shiite or a related sect, such as the Alawites, in Sunni rebel-held parts of Iraq and Syria today, has become as dangerous as being a Jew was in Nazi-controlled parts of Europe in 1940.
There is no doubt about the accuracy of the quote by Prince Bandar, secretary-general of the Saudi National Security Council from 2005 and head of General Intelligence between 2012 and 2014, the crucial two years when al Qaeda-type Jihadis took over the Sunni-armed opposition in Iraq and Syria. Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute, Dearlove, who headed MI6 from 1999 to 2004, emphasized the significance of Prince Bandar's words, saying that they constituted "a chilling comment that I remember very well indeed".
He does not doubt that substantial and sustained funding from private donors in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to which the authorities may have turned a blind eye, has played a central role in the ISIL surge into Sunni areas of Iraq. He said: "Such things simply do not happen spontaneously." This sounds realistic since the tribal and communal leadership in Sunni majority provinces is much beholden to Saudi and Persian Gulf paymasters, and would be unlikely to cooperate with ISIL without their consent.
He remembers the then head of Saudi General Intelligence "literally shouting at me across his office: '9/11 is a mere pinprick on the West. In the medium term, it is nothing more than a series of personal tragedies. What these terrorists want is to destroy the House of Saud and remake the Middle East.'" In the event, Saudi Arabia adopted both policies, encouraging the Jihadis as a useful tool of Saudi anti-Shiite influence abroad but suppressing them at home as a threat to the status quo. It is this dual policy that has fallen apart over the last year.
Saudi sympathy for anti-Shiite "militancy" is identified in leaked US official documents. The then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote in December 2009 in a cable released by Wikileaks that "Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT [Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan] and other terrorist groups."
http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13940918000286
Syria: Terrorists Start Withdrawing from Homs
TEHRAN (FNA)- A convoy of 14 busloads of militants evacuated Homs while they were accompanied by the UN and Red Crescent ambulances to retreat to Idlib Province under a deal signed with the government last week. [VIDEO]
Syria: Terrorists Start Withdrawing from Homs
http://en.farsnews.com/player.aspx?nn=13940918000755
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