Dozens of Anti-Regime Fighters, Including 10 Lebanese, Arrive at Bekaa Hospitals from Qusayr
Dozens of Syrian and Lebanese fighters wounded in fighting against Syrian regime troops and Hizbullah forces in Qusayr have been evacuated to Lebanon, security officials said Saturday.
They were evacuated as the regime seized the last remaining insurgent bastion in the Qusayr area of central Syria, near the Lebanese border.
The sources said the rebels included around 10 Lebanese Sunnis who had crossed to Syria to join the insurgency.
"Some 30 wounded fighters are being treated in hospitals in the Baalbek area" of eastern Lebanon, a security official told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.
He also said "dozens of wounded rebels" had arrived in the Bekaa border town of Arsal, awaiting treatment.
Another security official in northern Lebanon told AFP that "10 Lebanese Sunnis from (the port city of Tripoli) have been brought back for treatment. We are expecting more to arrive."
Earlier on Saturday, the Beirut-based, pro-Damascus television al-Mayadeen quoted a source as saying that “300 wounded gunmen who had fled Qusayr are now in Arsal and they will be transported to hospitals in the Bekaa and the North in batches."
Later, Lebanon's state-run National News Agency said Lebanese Red Cross ambulances, escorted by the Lebanese army, transported more than 30 Syrians who were wounded in clashes in Arsal's barren mountains and Qusayr to hospitals in the Lebanese region of Bekaa.
“Eight of them were transported to the Rashaya state-run hospital, 22 to Farhat Hospital in the Western Bekaa town of Jeb Jannine, and several others to hospitals in the Bekaa,” NNA said.
It also reported that a Lebanese man who hails from Tripoli was among the wounded and that his relatives arrived at Rashaya's hospital to move him to another hospital in the North.
Later on Saturday, NNA said nine more wounded fighters were transported for treatment in hospitals in the central and western Bekaa, raising the number of insurgents receiving treatment to 37.
It noted that 10 wounded fighters were transported to hospitals in the Bekaa on Friday.
In the evening, an international Red Cross convoy carrying wounded fighters from Arsal to Bekaa hospitals was pelted with stones on the al-Labweh-Baalbek road, NNA reported.
The convoy, however, continued its trip towards hospitals in the Bekaa, the agency said.
Pro-government forces captured the town of Qusayr on Wednesday after a nearly three-week assault by Assad's troops backed by elite fighters of Hizbullah.
Scores of civilians have also poured this week into the majority Sunni town of Arsal, a local official told AFP.
"Some 30 families arrived today from the Qusayr area," Ahmed al-Hujairi of Arsal municipality told AFP.
"Their situation is very bad -- they arrived exhausted. They have nothing. Some came here on foot," he said, adding that local authorities were short of funds and "only managing to provide basic assistance."
Source: Agence France Presse, Naharnet
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