Syria to U.N.: Border Areas Harboring Terrorists, al-Asaad in Lebanon to Prepare for Buffer Zone
Some Lebanese areas near the Lebanese-Syrian border “have become an incubator for terrorist elements from the al-Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood organizations who are tampering with the security of Syria and its citizens,” Syria’s foreign ministry said in a statement addressed to U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon.
These elements “are seeking to undermine the six-point plan of U.N. Special Envoy to Syria Kofi Annan,” said the letter sent by Bashar al-Jaafari, Syria’s Permanent Representative to the U.N. Security Council.
The letter claims that “arms depots” have been created in Lebanon’s border areas, noting that the alleged weapons are being shipped “by sea or on planes belonging to certain countries, which are shipping arms to Lebanon with the aim of smuggling them into Syria.”
The letter mentioned some incidents “confirming that terrorist groups in Syria are being supplied with arms and that terrorists are being smuggled across the Lebanese-Syrian border,” noting that “the offices of some charitable societies supervised by Salafist groups and the Mustaqbal Movement in Lebanese border areas ... have been turned into places for receiving and harboring terrorist elements from the al-Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood organizations.”
Damascus added that wounded opposition fighters “are being treated under fake names in hospitals and dispensaries affiliated with those groups and finance by countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar.”
The letter also claims that “50 terrorists are stationed in the town of al-Qalamoun in Tripoli under the command of Khaled al-Tanak, Khaled Hamza and Zakariya Ghaleb al-Khouli.”
The letter said the alleged terrorists “possess IDs carrying the stamp of the U.N. that they use to go through Lebanese army checkpoints.”
Jaafari added in his letter that Colonel Riyadh al-Asaad, chief of the rebel Free Syrian Army, had “recently arrived in Lebanon to prepare for creating a Syrian buffer zone within Lebanese territory.”
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