Man Held after Threatening 3 Children with 'Slaughter' in Video

A 30-year-old man was arrested Friday after he appeared in a video in which he terrorizes three young boys and threatens to slaughter them with a knife.

“The Intelligence Bureau of the Internal Security Forces has managed to arrest 30-year-old Lebanese suspect M. F. in the Nabatiyeh town of Ebba, after he threatened three toddlers with slaughter in a video circulated on social networking websites,” LBCI television reported.

“Who shall we slaughter first?” the man asks in the video, in which only his knife-wielding hand appears.

“Put your hand here or else I will sever your head,” he tells one of the terrified boys, who cry their lungs out throughout the video.

“You, come here … Do you belong to Daesh?” the man says, using an acronym for the full Arabic name of the extremist Islamic State group, which has recently beheaded two Lebanese soldiers.

The kidnap and murder of Lebanese troops and policemen by IS and al-Nusra Front jihadists have sparked new tensions in Lebanon, including a backlash against Syrian refugees and a string of sectarian kidnappings.

The captive soldiers and policemen were kidnapped during fierce clashes in the Bekaa border town of Arsal last month.

The hostage crisis and beheadings have inflamed tensions in Lebanon, which is hosting more than 1.1 million Syrian refugees, and where tensions were already soaring over the four-year conflict in Syria.

In recent days, tents belonging to Syrian refugees have been set alight and hundreds of Syrians sheltered in the Bekaa valley have fled for fear of attack. Several beatings of Syrian citizens were also reported in Beirut's southern suburbs.

In July, a video of a Lebanese child beating up a Syrian minor sparked uproar in the country.

The video showed the Lebanese child holding a stick and beating up the minor at the instructions of one of his relatives.

Y.R.