On another note, MP Houri told LBCI’s Nharkom Said that the 3 million US dollar grant to Lebanon offered by Saudi Arabia is for the strategic support of the Lebanese Army; whereas, the 1 billion US dollars pledged by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques is directly designated for the confrontation of terrorism.
Houri also noted that the cabinet is exerting tireless efforts to release the soldiers who were kidnapped during clashes with armed groups in the northeastern border town of Arsal.
Clashes erupted in Arsal on Saturday (August 01) when Syrian gunmen deployed across the region after the Lebanese Armed Forces arrested Syrian national Imad Ahmad Jomaa at a checkpoint.
The army said 20 soldiers have been killed, with at least 30 other ISF and LAF soldiers missing and 86 injured in the fighting.
On Thursday (August 07), a military source stated that a truce in Arsal appeared to be holding and the situation in the border town was quiet.
The source said LAF troops were combing the area in eastern Lebanon to see if gunmen were withdrawing under the terms of the truce. Lebanese security officials say the fighters include members of al Qaeda's Syria branch, the Nusra Front, and an al Qaeda splinter group, the Islamic State, which has seized swathes of land in Syria and Iraq.
The taking of Arsal was the first major incursion into Lebanon by hardline Sunni militants - leading players in Sunni-Shiite violence unfolding across the Levant - which threatens the stability of Lebanon by inflaming its own sectarian tensions.
Arsal is a Sunni Muslim town at the border where tens of thousands of refugees have taken shelter from the war in neighboring Syria. Their refugee camps have been badly damaged in the fighting, Syrian activists have reported.