Report: 20 Fighters from the North Traveled Lately to Syria Via Turkey

Around 20 Lebanese fighters from the city of Tripoli and other areas in the North have lately traveled to Syria to join the extremist Islamic State group, highly-informed security officials said.

The officials, who were not identified, told As Safir daily that the fighters headed to Syria via Turkey in the past weeks.

The majority of the young men, whose ages range between 19 and 22, are students and traveled to Turkey under the excuse of going there for tourism, the officials said.

They ruled out the presence of extremist officials in Tripoli for the mobilization of men to fight alongside the IS, saying their recruitment is taking place via the internet.

But As Safir stressed that the latest investigations carried out by security forces indicate that an IS official based in Tripoli is contacting the men and securing their transfer to Syria via Turkey.

The newspaper quoted the father of one of the fighters as saying that his son told him he was heading to Beirut to spend a few days in the capital.

But he lost contact with the young men, who later telephoned his father saying he was now “at the (battle) front in (the Kurdish border town of) Kobane along with jihadists.”

A security official told the Associated Press last month that the IS and Syria's al-Qaida affiliate, al-Nusra Front, are actively trying to recruit among disaffected youth in impoverished areas of northern Lebanon.

Many Sunnis are convinced that the army and the government are dominated by Hizbullah, which has sent its fighters to Syria to help troops loyal to President Bashar Assad against the Sunni rebels trying to topple him.

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