Identities of Five Tall Kalakh Victims Revealed

The names of five Lebanese Islamists killed in the Tall Kalakh ambush in Syria were revealed on Tuesday, as a result of phone calls by Prime Minister Najib Miqati and Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour with relevant parties.

Reports have said that the Syrian Foreign Ministry expressed its willingness to hand over the bodies of the Lebanese victims for “humanitarian reasons”.

The five names revealed to this moment are: Malek al-Hajj Dib, 23, Abdul Karim Ibrahim, 18, Abdul Rahman al-Hasan, 22, Youssef Abou Arida, 26, and Bilal Khodr al-Ghoul, 22.

"The families of these victims all reside in al-Mankoubine area,” the Imam of al-Nour mosque in the town said, adding that Bab al-Tabbaneh residents will convene soon to decide on the next steps to be adopted in the pursuit of gathering information about the fate of the rest of the bodies and of those who have survived the attack.

Twenty-two young men, including a Palestinian, were the victims of an ambush carried out by Syrian regime forces on Friday in Tall Kalakh. Media outlets reporting the news had conflicting reports about the number of people who died and those who survived the attack.

While the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that a group of 30 rebels "were caught in an ambush by government troops in the area of Tall Sarin near the town of Tall Kalakh”, Voice of Lebanon radio (100.5) said the ambush left 20 Lebanese men dead, adding that they hail from Akkar's Fnaideq and Tripoli's Bab al-Tabbaneh and al-Mankoubine neighborhoods.