New Border Fighting Between ISIS and Lebanon's Army

BEIRUT, Lebanon - A deadly confrontation worsened on Monday between Lebanon's armed forces and Islamist insurgents from Syria who seized the border town of Arsal over the weekend in what appeared to be the most serious spillover of the Syrian civil war into Lebanese territory since the conflict began more than three years ago.

The Lebanese Army said in a statement that its forces were engaged in fierce battles with the Islamists in Arsal, where witnesses reached by telephone, including the deputy mayor, said shelling had hit the town from multiple directions and many residents had fled. Arsal is also the temporary home of many Syrian war refugees who sought sanctuary there, and witnesses said Lebanese Army checkpoints were refusing to let the refugees relocate deeper into Lebanon.

'The situation is miserable,' said Arsal's deputy mayor, Ahmad Flitti. 'Now the shelters are full, soon we are going to have shortages in drugs, and hospitals here will not be able to receive more wounded.'

The Lebanese Army statement said its casualties from three days of fighting totaled 14 soldiers killed, 86 wounded and 22 missing, with at least some of them presumed captured by the militants. More than 20 Islamist fighters were also believed to have been killed, but it was impossible to determine their precise casualties.

The Arsal fighting began on Friday when the Lebanese Army arrested Imad Ahmad Jomaa, the commander of a Syrian Islamist rebel group in Arsal. His disciples, which included brigades affiliated with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, responded by attacking Lebanese troops, and the insurgents quickly seized control of the town. They have demanded Mr. Jomaa's release as a condition for any cease-fire.

'Let them release our emir and we are ready to pull out from all over the town,' said one of Mr. Jomaa's deputies, reached by phone in Arsal, who identified himself as Abu Osama. 'Or else we will escalate and expand, and we will ask for more demands.'

Cross-border clashes and shelling from the Syrian side have occasionally disrupted the Syria-Lebanon frontier, but the takeover of a town in Lebanon by members of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, had never happened before. While the push into Lebanon by ISIS was limited, it reflected the expansionary aims of the group's leaders, whose fighters seized parts of Iraq less than two months ago and regard the entire area as their future monolithic Islamic state.

'It's another front for ISIS and another sign containment of the Syria crisis has failed,' said Andrew J. Tabler, senior fellow at the Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The Lebanese cabinet met in an emergency session on Monday to deal with the Arsal crisis, and Prime Minister Tammam Salam appeared to have ruled out negotiations with the town's Islamist insurgent occupiers, even if they are holding Lebanese soldiers as captives.

'There is no political solution with extremist groups who are manipulating the Arab communities under religious obscurantism and strange titles, seeking to transfer their sick acts into Lebanon,' Mr. Salam said in a televised statement. 'Today, the only solution is the withdrawal of the gunmen from Arsal and its surroundings.'