The following are a selection of stories from Lebanese newspapers that may be of interest to Daily Star readers. The Daily Star cannot vouch for the accuracy of these reports.
As-Safir
Arsal residents leave, fearing militants reprisals
More than 100 families have left Arsal in recent weeks, some of them indefinitely, after being warned that they featured on a hit list drawn by the Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS). The list is said to include those who had collaborated with Army intelligence against the jihadi militants.
According to As-Safir, the militants are moving in and out of Arsal without restraints and raiding the houses of suspected collaborators.
Al-Akhbar
New video of military captives to be released
A video showing missing military and security personnel will be soon released by their captors in the Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), according Al-Akhbar, which quoted informed sources as saying that the video will show new personnel who did not appear in previous tapes released by the captors.
Turkey and Qatar have come on board in the negotiations for freeing the missing personnel, according to Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk, who has refused to give families of the captives any information about the progress of negotiations. Machnouk told the families they should not expect any news from him unless there is a serious progress in the mediation undertaken by the Qataris and the Turks.
Al-Liwaa
Lebanon not a priority in the region
No presidential election or political breakthrough is expected to take place within the next couple of months because Lebanon is not priority in the region, according to ministerial sources. Reports about holding the poll in September are mere speculation, despite efforts deployed by MP Walid Jumblatt to promote some kind of an initiative that might lead to a settlement or presidential deal.
The sources noted that despite the current regional rapprochement and the lining up against the terrorism of jihadi militants in Iraq and Syria, no impact would be felt in Lebanon “because it still does not figure among priorities at the level of regional understandings.”
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