Lebanon and Syria agree to ceasefire after cross-border attacks kill 10

By Nadeen Ebrahim and Charbel Mallo, CNN

(CNN) — The defense ministers of Syria and Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire on Monday, Syria’s state-run SANA news agency reported, after cross-border attacks left 10 dead and more than 50 wounded.

The two officials also agreed to strengthen coordination and cooperation between their countries, according to SANA.

The agreement follows an escalation of tensions between Beirut and Syria’s new Islamist-led government. In the past two days, cross-border attacks have killed three Syrians and seven Lebanese, according to the two governments, with 52 people being wounded on the Lebanese side.

On Monday, Syria shelled Lebanese villages on the border after three Syrians died in the northern Lebanese town of Qasr, according to the Lebanese military, which said its forces responded to the attack.

The Syrian shelling also targeted Qasr, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said.

On Sunday, Syria’s defense ministry accused the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah of kidnapping three Syrian troops from Syrian territory in an ambush, the state news agency SANA reported, saying they were “taken to Lebanese territory and executed on the spot.”

It also said that a photographer and reporter were injured on the Syria-Lebanon border after being struck by a “Hezbollah missile.”

The Lebanese army said that two Syrians were killed at the border and another died in hospital, and that the three bodies were handed over to Syria.

Hezbollah denied involvement in the border clashes, the Lebanese state news agency NNA reported, saying it “has no connection to any events taking place within Syrian territory.”

In response, Lebanon’s presidency said Monday that tensions on the country’s frontier with Syria “cannot go on.”

“What is happening on the eastern and northeastern borders cannot go on, and we will not accept its continuation,” the presidency said on X.

If confirmed to have been conducted by Syria, the attack on Lebanon would mark rare action by Syria’s new government on one of its neighbors. The country’s leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has repeatedly said he wants to maintain stability with Syria’s neighbors and has so far refrained from responding to repeated Israeli strikes on his country.

The clashes are a sign of growing tensions at the Lebanon-Syria border, northeast of the Beqaa valley, where predominantly Shiite Lebanese villages have seen skirmishes with Syrian soldiers in recent weeks.

Syria’s new government is led by former Sunni-Islamist militants who ousted the regime of Iran-allied Bashar al-Assad late last year. Shiite Hezbollah had intervened in Syria during the country’s civil war to help Assad fight the Sunni militants.

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