Lebanon demands tighter borders after ‘FSA kidnap’

Lebanese president Michel Sleiman called for heightened security measures on Saturday following the kidnap of two young men from the Bekaa valley. Sleiman demanded security officials tighten control over the border with Syria and prevent attempts to bring the Syrian conflict into Lebanon via such acts, which he said all Lebanese people condemned. An armed group, believed to belong to the Free Syrian Army, which is stationed on the western side of an eastern mountain belt near Syria, kidnapped two people from Ain al-Qarqouz town (6 kilometres inside the Lebanese territory) in Brital, eastern Baalbek. The gunmen took the victims across the Syrian border amid heavy shooting in which a third person, Ibrahim Hikmat Ismael, was injured, but managed to escape. He identified the abductees as his brother Hasan Ismael and his Syrian brother-in-law Saleh Kurdieh, who he said was also injured in the shooting.