Lebanon security chief: Islamic State seeking bases inside Lebanon
Islamic State militants holed up in the Qalamoun mountains on the Syrian-Lebanese border are seeking to gain control of nearby Lebanese villages to support their fighting positions, the head of Lebanon's main security apparatus told Reuters.
Major General Abbas Ibrahim said Lebanese forces were on high alert to prevent the hardline militants from seizing any Lebanese territory near the Qalamoun mountains, which demarcate Lebanon's eastern border with Syria.
Ibrahim, who is the head of Lebanon's General Security office, said Islamic State had recently boosted its numbers in the Qalamoun area with the aim of securing crossborder territory to support its Syrian operations.
"Islamic State does not want to dominate Qalamoun ... but they want to use it to secure their backs in the region through controlling (Lebanese) villages in contact with the Qalamoun area," he said.
"The (Lebanese) military and security forces are on full alert," he told Reuters at his village home in southern Lebanon.
Ibrahim said Islamic State had become the dominant armed group in Qalamoun. "In the recent period about 700 new fighters pledged allegiance, and so they are now more than 1,000 fighters," he said.
