BAALBEK, Lebanon: The Lebanese Army Thursday retrieved the body of a policeman killed by the Nusra Front while being held captive on the country’s northeastern border, hours after troops repelled an attack by jihadis on the area.
Speaking to The Daily Star, a senior Army source said the military received the body of 1st Sgt. Ali Bazzal on the outskirts of the northeastern town of Arsal.
The body was taken in an Army ambulance to the military hospital in Badaro, Beirut, for DNA testing.
Journalists attempting to reach Arsal following news of the handover were prevented access to the town. Soldiers at a Lebanese Army checkpoint at Arsal’s entrance told them they now need a special permit to visit the area.
The Nusra Front shot Bazzal dead last December. He hailed from the Bekaa Valley village of Bazzalieh, where his body will be laid to rest Friday.
The Nusra Front and ISIS still hold 25 policemen and Lebanese soldiers in captivity since a brief incursion into the northeastern border town of Arsal last August. Negotiations to free the captives, held in Arsal’s outskirts, have reportedly stalled and their families are now holding an open-ended sit-in in Downtown Beirut to pressure the Lebanese government to hasten their release.
A General Security source said he could not say that the handing over of Bazzal’s body by the Nusra Front was an indicator that a breakthrough would follow in negotiations to release the 25 servicemen.
General Security is handling talks to free the captives.
“All I can say is that negotiations are ongoing. They slow sometimes and get faster at other times,” the source told The Daily Star.
With tears rolling down his cheeks, Ramez Bazzal, Ali’s father, described his son as “the martyr of the nation.”
“We will not let the blood of our son go in vain and I hold Sheikh Mustafa Hujeiri fully responsible for the killing of my son,” Bazzal said as he received people who flocked to pay condolences at his house in Bazzalieh. A wanted preacher from Arsal, Hujeiri is accused of sympathizing with Nusra Front militants.
Bazzal said that from the first moment he heard about the kidnapping of his son, he considered him a martyr and had no hope that he would return back home alive.
Earlier Friday, the Army said it killed a jihadi militant and wounded several others when repelling an attempted “terrorist” infiltration on the outskirts of the Arsal.
An Army statement said soldiers exchanged fire late Wednesday with an “armed terrorist group” on the highlands of Wadi Hmeid-Arsal that tried to infiltrate into the town, forcing it to retreat.
The Army said among the wounded was Khaled Ahmad al-Waw, who was arrested and taken to a hospital for treatment.
Meanwhile, tensions persisted in Arsal for the second day, as efforts to release a Lebanese kidnapped by Syrian militants in the town hit a dead end, security sources said.
Hussein Saifeddine, a resident of the mainly Shiite Baalbek-Hermel village of Halbata, was kidnapped by Syrian militants from the border village of Qara this week.
In a bid to pressure the captors to free Saifeddine, members of the Ezzeddine family in Arsal kidnapped five Syrians Wednesday.
The five hostages were released Thursday despite the lack of progress in negotiations.
The negotiations were disrupted Wednesday by the captors from the Warde family, who set very high demands, a figure from the Ezzeddine family told The Daily Star.
The security sources said that M. Hujeiri, who is thought to be behind the kidnapping of Saifeddine, insisted on demanding a ransom as a condition for his release.
M. Hujeiri has several arrest warrants against him.
Separately, the Army said in a statement that it would take “special security measures” near churches and places where people would gather to celebrate Good Friday.
The Army would stage patrols and erect checkpoints in these places, the statement said.
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