By Kathryn Maureen Ryan
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

BEIRUT, Lebanon – According to Lebanon’s official news agency, Syrian military helicopters have launched three air-raids in areas inside Lebanon near the town of Arsal on the Syrian border. The airstrikes signify a spill over of the Syrian Civil War, now in its third year, into neighboring countries as the regime attempts to cut-off supply routes used by rebel forces.

On 28 February Reuters reported that an airstrikes near the town of Arsal killed three people and wounded seven. Later that day Sunni militants inside Syria fired rockets into the Lebanese’s town of Britel, a Hezbollah stronghold. The attack wounded a women and her two children.

The majority of the people living in the border town of Arsal’s support the Syrian revolution and opposition fighters. The town is now home to tens of thousands of Syrian refugees and has experienced a sudden influx of displaced persons as the Syrian government launches a mass assault across the border in the Qalamoun region or Syria.

On Wednesday, Syrian helicopters carried out the air raids in the sparsely populated mountainous regions outside of the town of Arsal, near the Syrian border. Airstrikes have become common along the Lebanon-Syria border. Syrian war planes and helicopters routinely carry out air strikes along the border, inside of Lebanon.

Syrian warplanes carried out a series of airstrikes near a Lebanese border town on Wednesday, the latest evidence of a spill over of the Syria’s civil war into neighbouring countries. The town’s Deputy Mayor Ahmad Fliti said that an airstrike was carried out near the border town on Wednesday and that at least eight airstrikes have been carried out along the town’s outskirts where thousands of refugees have established tent-encampments.

Asem Alzein, a Syrian doctor who lives in Arsal said a 30-year-old woman and seven-year-old girl in Wadi Hmaied were wounded during the airstrikes. He said that one blast hit only a few hundred meters away from a school, forcing the teachers and students to flee the building.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or damages from Wednesday’s round of air-strikes which appears to be linked to the regime’s military offensive against the rebel stronghold of Yabroud. Syrian journalists who were taken on a state-orchestrated tour of government-held areas around Yabroud on Tuesday reported that they heard gunfire and saw military jets flying overhead. The offensive is an attempt by the Assad regime to gain control of border regions in order to cut-off shipments of arms and other supplies to rebel groups.

For more information please see:

Al Aljazeera – Syrian air raids hit Lebanese border region – 05 March 2014

Reuters – Syrian Air Raids Hit Lebanese Border Region – 05 March 2014

ABC News – Syrian Aircraft Strike near Lebanese Border Town – 04 March 2014

Reuters – Syrian Air Strikes Kill Three near Lebanese Border – 28 February 2014