Well-informed sources told LBCI that the Qatari envoy Ahmad al-Khatib did not tackle the issue of the abducted soldiers during his last visit to Lebanon, but his trip only aimed to receive a Qatari woman who lived with her mother in Syria, and the kidnappers took charge of transporting her from Syria to Lebanon.
Al-Khatib is a Syrian national appointed by the Qatari authorities to mediate in the negotiations conducted with the kidnappers of the Lebanese troops in Arsal.
The men were taken hostage when militants from Syria took over the Lebanese border town of Arsal in August for five days before withdrawing toward the Syrian frontier, taking with them Lebanese soldiers and policemen as hostages. The clashes were the most dangerous spillover of violence from the civil war in neighboring Syria.
The clashes flared up when Syrian gunmen deployed across the region after the Lebanese Armed Forces arrested Imad Jomaa at a checkpoint.
The detention of Imad Jomaa, the leader of the Fajr al-Islam Brigade, had caused security tension in the border town of Arsal, claiming the lives of 20 soldiers and leaving 86 others injured.
On Friday 05 December, al-Nusra Front issued a statement via twitter, whereby it claimed that it had executed hostage Ali al-Bazzal and threatening to murder another captive.
The al-Nusra Front released on Saturday (September 20) a video depicting the execution of the Lebanese soldier Mohammad Hamieh with a bullet to the head. The video also showed Lebanese soldier Ali al-Bazzal pleading his family to act or else he would face execution.
In the same regard, Turkey's Anatolia news agency quoted on Saturday (September 06) a commander of the Islamic State as saying that the group had executed one of the captured Lebanese Armed Forces soldiers for trying to escape. "LAF soldier Abbas Medlej tried to escape from prison and after he attempted to open fire at IS members, we took control of the situation by slaughtering him," the Islamic State- Qalamoun branch said in a statement.
Also on August 28, the Islamic State posted photos and a video online depicting a militant beheading a blindfolded hostage who was identified as Lebanese Armed Forces Sergeant Ali al-Sayyed.
The captives' relatives have been staging sit-ins and blocking roads in order to urge the release of the troops.