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Battle in Syria Pulls Hezbollah Further Into Assad’s War Hezbollah’s Role in Syria War Shakes the Lebanese
(about 6 hours later)
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Fighting raged for the second day on Monday in the strategic Syrian city of Qusayr, as government forces, backed by Shiite fighters from the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, unleashed new airstrikes and rebels fought back fiercely in parts of the city, Syrian opposition activists said. NABI CHIT, Lebanon — At the entrance to this village in Hezbollah’s Bekaa Valley heartland, under a sign welcoming visitors to “The Citadel of Resistance,” workers on Monday hoisted a freshly printed banner honoring a young man described as one of Hezbollah’s latest martyrs — killed in battle not with Israel, the foe the group’s guerrillas train to fight, but with Syrian rebels.
The toll of dead and wounded continued to rise for Hezbollah, which is fighting its biggest battle yet on the side of President Bashar al-Assad. Both sides have depicted the fighting in Qusayr as a turning point in the war that is raising regional tensions as Hezbollah plunges more deeply into the conflict. Down the road, another dead fighter’s uncle, Fayez Shukor, welcomed mourners under a tent overlooking the valley as the sun set on a day that had seen Hezbollah’s death toll rise to unexpected heights as the group joined Syrian forces trying to storm the rebel-held Syrian city of Qusayr. His nephew, he had said earlier, died on Sunday alongside 11 other Hezbollah fighters killed in a single rebel attack.
Funerals for Hezbollah fighters were already being held in the group’s strongholds in the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition watchdog group, reported that at least 28 Hezbollah guerrillas had died in the fighting. If confirmed, that would be by far the largest toll for Hezbollah in a single Syrian battle. Lebanon reeled Monday from the twin realizations that Hezbollah, the nation’s most powerful military and political organization, was plunging deeper into a war the country has tried to stay out of, and that the group was taking unaccustomed losses. Mr. Shukor, a former government minister from Lebanon’s Arab Socialist Baath Party, walked a careful line between supporting a declaration by Hezbollah that Syria’s fight is its fight and acknowledging the contradiction of fighting fellow Arab Muslims instead of Israelis.
After heavy fighting throughout Sunday, in which regime forces appeared to be gaining ground, Syrian state media and pro-opposition sources gave widely divergent versions on Monday of the battles which raged in the city and left scores of fighters dead. “I wish all this blood had been shed in the south, fighting Israel,” Mr. Shukor said, but added that the rebels battling Hezbollah’s ally, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, were “infidels and garbage” serving Israel; the West, he said, should recognize that they are Al Qaeda-linked extremists and help wipe them out.
Jad, an activist from Qusayr who declined to be identified by his full name, reached through Skype, said that rebels killed 30 members of Hezbollah and regime forces on Monday at dawn in an ambush when the government soldiers were trying to retrieve the bodies of the group’s commanders. A video posted online, which could not be independently verified, showed an activist pointing to seven damaged vehicles apparently belonging to Hezbollah and listed the losses inflicted on the group. He then repeated the charge that extremists among the Sunni Muslim rebels have flung at Hezbollah’s Shiites. “They are not Muslims,” he said.
In the video, fighters then seize the arm of a dead man on the floor and point out a tattoo of Imam Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of prophet Muhammad, a religious figure revered by Shiites. This, the fighters said, proved the body was that of a Hezbollah fighter. Lebanon and the region have been electrified by the fierce fighting in Qusayr and the role of Hezbollah. Fighters on both sides said rebels continued to hold the north of the city against Hezbollah, the Syrian Army and pro-government militias.
On Monday, SANA, the Syrian official state news agency, reported that army units “restored stability and security to the full eastern area” of Qusayr, killing large numbers of “terrorists and destroying their hideouts”. It published four photographs of a battered vehicle that it said was found in Qusayr, and quoted a “media source” as claiming the vehicle belonged to Israeli forces and was used by “terrorists” in the city, proving “the scale of Israel’s military and intelligence involvement.” Ali, a Lebanese Shiite with ties to Hezbollah, said that a relative and other fighters, updating him by text message from the battlefield, were struck by the rebels’ tenacity. One Hezbollah fighter, he said, told him that even after being shot, rebels “got up and attacked in a brutal way.”
On Sunday, Syrian government troops backed by Hezbollah fighters pushed into parts of Qusayr, hammering the city with airstrikes and artillery, killing at least 52 people and wounding hundreds as civilians cowered, unable to flee, activists said. By the end of the day on Sunday, about 60 percent of the city, which is in Homs Province, was under the army’s control for the first time in months, one activist said. The growing stream of funerals suggests that in Qusayr, Hezbollah is asking followers for their deepest sacrifice in Syria yet, one that it has no choice but to embrace and explain. The exact toll is unclear, as Hezbollah does not always announce deaths right away or specify dates and locations.
Mr. Assad, according to people who have spoken with him, believes that reasserting his hold in the province is crucial to maintaining control of a string of population centers in western Syria, and eventually to military campaigns to retake rebel-held territory in the north and east. Many analysts say that it is unlikely that the government will be able to regain control of those areas, but that it could consolidate its grip on the west, leading to a de facto division of the country. At least 14 Hezbollah fighters were killed over the weekend, according to Hezbollah Web sites and relatives of fighters. Phillip C. Smyth, a University of Maryland researcher who studies Hezbollah, listed on the Jihadology Web site 20 fighters whose deaths were announced by official and unofficial Hezbollah sites, a number he said could grow. Syrian opposition activists, eager to claim an underdog victory, say more than 40 have died.
Echoes of the battle in Qusayr have rippled across neighboring Lebanon, which is deeply divided between supporters and opponents of Mr. Assad. In the northern city of Tripoli, from which many Sunni Muslim militants have joined the Syrian rebels, residents held a candlelight vigil late Sunday in support of Qusayr’s rebels. In Shiite areas, residents worried about relatives fighting in Syria and prayed for victory in a battle Hezbollah has framed as a proxy fight against its main foe, Israel, and an intervention to defend Shiites in Syria, of both Lebanese and Syrian descent, and other minorities they say are threatened by the uprising led by Syria’s Sunni majority. Either way, the numbers stand out. In its 34-day war with a stronger foe, Israel, in 2006, Hezbollah acknowledged losing 250 fighters, about 8 a day. (Outside estimates hover around 500 total.) Hezbollah supporters explain the toll in Syria by noting that Hezbollah trains to defend its own territory, not to attack opponents who are defending their own turf.
Recapturing the strategic rebel-held town, located in the province of Homs, has been a long-held goal of the Syrian regime as Qusayr constitutes a major supply conduit regularly used by rebels to smuggle weapons from Lebanon into the province of Homs. The scale of the fighting — among the most intense ground battles in Syria’s war — has forced Lebanon to contend anew with a perennial problem. Hezbollah, stronger than the Lebanese Army, has the power to drag the country into war without a government decision, as in 2006, when it set off the war by capturing three Israeli soldiers.
The Joint Command of the Free Syrian Army, the loose-knit United States-backed rebel umbrella group, has said that hospitals in Baalbek and the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut had accepted many Hezbollah wounded. It issued a rallying cry that supporters of Hezbollah were bound to see as inflammatory, calling the group “impure,” in a phrase that could resonate as a sectarian slur against Shiites. Hezbollah’s critics also complained that the Lebanese Army’s seeming complicity in allowing a large Hezbollah force to cross the border could be viewed as Lebanon’s entering the war — a charge that Hezbollah and Mr. Assad’s supporters have leveled for the opposite reason, as Lebanese Sunnis flow into Syria to join the rebels.
It congratulated rebels holding out in Qusayr, calling them “brave heroes whose victories will be highlighted by history in letters made of light as they have defended their land and their honor from the impurity of the criminal terrorist members of Hezbollah.” It also taunted Hezbollah’s leadership, saying, “We know very well how their gang is constructed and we know how to take it apart and we will take it apart. We see heads that are ripe for the picking.” An official with the March 14 movement, Hezbollah’s main political rival, said that with Hezbollah’s help Mr. Assad could probably take Qusayr, a crucial area because it lies near the border and links Damascus with the rebel-held north and the government-held coast. But, the official said, it could cost Hezbollah hundreds of fighters.
In a dig at Lebanese families sending Hezbollah fighters to the battle, the Free Syrian Army said, “We can now say that every single family or neighborhood in Baalbek or Hermel has a dead family member among their sons who fought in Qusayr.” He questioned why Hezbollah would want to sink itself into “Dien Bien Phu,” a barbed suggestion that the group would endure the fate of French troops defeated by the Vietnamese in 1954 in a decisive blow to French colonial power.
One relative of a slain Hezbollah fighter spoke in equally strong terms about the battle, saying in an interview that it was as crucial for the party as the struggle against Israel. The Free Syrian Army, the loose-knit rebel umbrella group backed by the United States, issued a statement bound to fuel its frontal battle with Hezbollah, attacking the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah. “We are today calling Nasrallah a killer of the Syrian people,” a spokesman, Louay Mekdad, told the Al-Arabiya channel.
According to activists, Hezbollah fighters on Sunday swept into villages that had been controlled by rebels but met with fierce resistance there. State media and opposition activists reported that regime forces, backed by Hezbollah, managed to recaptured more than half of Qusayr including the municipality building. The battle also increasingly seemed to pit Hezbollah, the region’s most battle-hardened Shiite force, head-on against Sunni jihadis, some accused of affiliation with Al Qaeda. Rebels flying the black banner often used by Al Nusra Front, the extremist rebel group — listed, like Hezbollah, as a terrorist group by the United States — filmed themselves attacking armored vehicles at close range with machine guns and taking deadly fire.
“Battles are still raging between the jihadists and Hezbollah,” said Malek Ammar, an anti-regime activist in Qusayr, referring to the fighting on Monday. “All their attempts yesterday to advance from several fronts failed. For two days now, they’ve been trying to advance deeper into the town but, praise be to God, a large number of their fighters were killed and 16 vehicles were destroyed. Their plan has failed. Now there’s a new plan”. The heat of the fighting brought into sharp relief the danger of a regional nightmare, all-out war between Shiites and Sunnis. Some rebel supporters urged on the fighters against the “impurity” of Hezbollah, a phrase that resonates as a slur against Shiites.
Mr. Ammar added that rebels found out, through an informant, that Hezbollah fighters have decided to shift tactics and infiltrate the outskirts of the city through small alleyways in order to turn the battle into a more traditional guerrilla war which they have been trained for. Regime forces have been besieging the town from all sides to prevent supplies from reaching rebels, according to activists in Qusayr. Echoes of the fight rippled across Lebanon, divided between supporters and opponents of Mr. Assad roughly, though not entirely, along sectarian lines. In the northern city of Tripoli, which supplies Sunni fighters to rebel ranks, three Lebanese soldiers were killed Monday in clashes with rebels.
Tarek, another activist in Qusayr reached through Skype, said he was filming events unfolding in the city from a centrally located building, and that regime forces have been pounding Qusayr relentlessly since Sunday. In Shiite areas, people prayed for relatives fighting with Hezbollah, and for victory in a battle the group has framed as both a proxy fight with Israel and an intervention to defend Lebanese and Syrian Shiites and other minorities from an uprising they view as driven by Sunni extremists.
In the Bekaa Valley, Hezbollah’s normally airtight public-relations machine seemed momentarily off balance. The group has vowed never to “hide our martyrs,” and Mr. Shukor proudly invited reporters to his nephew’s funeral. But Hezbollah operatives politely barred them and escorted them out of town. They were allowed back only after Mr. Shukor raised a fuss.
Bouquets of roses lined the marble banisters leading to a terrace where a dirge played quietly for the fighter, Hassan Faisal Shukor, 23. Mr. Shukor said he was the son of his favorite sister, “like a son to me.”
“This is a very deep loss for us,” he said. “But it’s an honor.”

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Nabi Chit, and Hania Mourtada from Beirut, Lebanon.