The Lebanese Army has boosted its presence in the northeast of the country after a series of tit-for-tat kidnappings in the area over the weekend, security sources said Monday.
On Sunday evening an armed group kidnapped Hussein Kamel Jaafar, 37, near Khirbet Daoud in Arsal, northeast Lebanon, the sources said, prompting the Jaafar clan to kidnap residents from the area in retaliation.
The sources said at least nine residents from Arsal were abducted in separate incidents along the international highway between Baalbek and Hermel.
One of the kidnapped was released later in the night, they added.
In one incident, the clan members opened fire on an ambulance transporting wounded members of the Free Syrian Army from the border town of Arsal, wounding a Lebanese paramedic and snatching the vehicle’s driver, Hassan Ezzedine, who hails from Arsal.
The sources said the ambulance belonged to an Islamic medical association that was transporting two wounded FSA members to a hospital in Baalbek.
The paramedic, Abdel al-Saleh, and the two Syrian nationals were found in the vehicle and later taken to a hospital for treatment, the sources said.
