Syria, Lebanon agree to ceasefire after cross-border attacks kill 10, injure dozens

The two officials also agreed to strengthen coordination and cooperation between their countries, according to SANA.

The agreement follows an escalation of tensions between Beirut and Syria’s new government. In the past two days, cross-border attacks have killed three Syrians and seven Lebanese, according to the two governments, with 52 people being wounded on the Lebanese side.

On Monday, Syria shelled Lebanese villages on the border after three Syrians died in the northern Lebanese town of Qasr, according to the Lebanese military, which said its forces responded to the attack.

The Syrian shelling also targeted Qasr, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported.

On Sunday, Syria’s defense ministry accused the Lebanese group Hezbollah of kidnapping three Syrian troops from Syrian territory in an ambush, the state news agency SANA reported, adding they were “taken to Lebanese territory and executed on the spot.”

It also claimed that a photographer and reporter were injured on the Syria-Lebanon border after being struck by a “Hezbollah missile.”

The Lebanese army announced that two Syrians were killed at the border and another died in hospital, and that the three bodies were handed over to Syria.

Hezbollah denied involvement in the border clashes, the Lebanese state news agency NNA reported, saying it “has no connection to any events taking place within Syrian territory.”

In response, Lebanon’s presidency noted Monday that tensions on the country’s frontier with Syria “cannot go on.”

“What is happening on the eastern and northeastern borders cannot go on, and we will not accept its continuation,” the presidency wrote on X.

If confirmed to have been conducted by Syria, the attack on Lebanon would mark rare action by Syria’s new government on one of its neighbors. The country’s leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has repeatedly said he wants to maintain stability with Syria’s neighbors and has so far refrained from responding to repeated Israeli strikes on his country.

The clashes are a sign of growing tensions at the Lebanon-Syria border, northeast of the Beqaa valley, where predominantly Shiite Lebanese villages have seen skirmishes with Syrian soldiers in recent weeks.

Syria’s new government is led by former militants who ousted the government of Bashar al-Assad late last year. Hezbollah had intervened in Syria during the country’s war to help Assad fight the militants.