NOVANEWS
The Al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front Thursday killed a 14-year-old Syrian and threw his body onto the side road in east Lebanon, security sources told The Daily Star.
The sources said a car bearing the black flag of the radical group fighting government forces in the Syrian civil war tossed the boy’s body onto a road in the Arsal area of Wadi Hmayyed in the afternoon.
Unconfirmed media reports said that a note bearing the message “this is the punishment of he who curses God” was found next to the teen’s body.
The reports said that the boy worked for a gas station in Wadi Hmayyed and got into a dispute with the militants Wednesday night while they were filling water canisters from the station. The militants later kidnapped the boy and killed him, the reports said.
Security incidents and kidnappings linked to radical groups have recently surged in the Sunni-dominated town of Arsal, where most residents oppose Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime. Last weekend, three teens were briefly kidnapped and tortured in the town by the Nusra Front, over an incident linked to trading cigarettes.
Islamist groups fighting in Syria – such as the Nusra Front – have been known to physically punish people under the pretext of applying Shariah law.
The wider Arsal area, which previously had a population of 35,000, is hosting more than 50,000 Syrian refugees.
The outskirts of the town have become a hub for Syrian militants who crossed into Lebanon after Syrian government troops wrested control of the country’s border areas from rebels earlier this year.
