BEIRUT (AP)
-- Gunmen assassinated a prominent Syrian pro-government figure at his
home in southern Lebanon on Wednesday in the latest sign of Syria's
civil war spilling over into its smaller neighbor, security officials
said.
Mohammed Darrar Jammo was gunned down,
shot nearly 30 times, in the coastal town of Sarafand, a stronghold of
the Shiite militant Hezbollah group, the officials said on condition of
anonymity in line with regulations. Assassinations of politicians, army
officers and journalists who support President Bashar Assad's regime are
not uncommon in Syria, but the killing of a well-known Syrian in
Lebanon is rare.
Violence linked to Syria's
civil war is increasingly washing across Lebanon, threatening to unleash
large-scale fighting in the country. On Tuesday, a roadside bomb struck
a Hezbollah convoy near the Syrian border, while last week a car bomb
in south Beirut wounded 53 people in the heart of the militant group's
bastion of support.
Syria's conflict has cut
deep fissures through Lebanon and exposed the country's split loyalties.
Many Lebanese Sunnis support the overwhelmingly Sunni uprising against
Assad in Syria, while Shiites generally back Hezbollah and the regime.
Clashes between pro- and anti-Assad groups in Lebanon have left scores
of people dead in recent months, and the violence has escalated as
Hezbollah's role fighting alongside the regime has become public.
Jammo,
a 44-year-old political analyst who often appeared on Arab TV stations,
was one of Assad's most vociferous defenders. In frequent appearances
on television talk shows, he would staunchly support the Syrian regime's
strong-armed response to the uprising and in at least one case shouted
down opposition figures and called them "traitors."
His
hard-line stance earned him enemies among Syria's opposition, and some
in the anti-Assad camp referred to Jammo as "shabih," a term used for
pro-government gunmen who have been blamed for some of the worst mass
killings of the civil war.
Lebanon's state
news agency published a photo Wednesday of a shirtless Jammo lying on a
blue sheet stained with blood, his chest riddled with bullet wounds.
The
Lebanese security officials said Jammo's Lebanese wife and daughter
were both in the house at the time of the attack. His daughter was later
rushed to the hospital after suffering from shock, the officials said.
They added that a Lebanese man was detained near Jammo's house in Sarafand shortly after the shooting and was being questioned.
Sarafand
is in predominantly Shiite southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah holds sway
and Assad enjoys wide support among the local people.
The
militant group has taken on a major role in Syria's conflict on the
side of Assad's forces, which has contributed to a spike in Sunni-Shiite
tensions in Lebanon. It has also prompted warnings from Syrian rebel
groups, who have threatened to retaliate on Hezbollah's home turf.
Inside
Syria on Wednesday, Kurdish gunmen captured most of a town near the
border with Turkey after a day of fighting against jihadi groups in the
area, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Such
clashes have been common over the past moths in rebel-held areas in
northern Syria.
The Observatory said the
fighting in the town of Ras al-Ayn between the pro-government militia of
the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, and members of
al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant left at least 11 dead people dead, including nine extremists.
The
Observatory said the fighting was taking place a few hundred meters
from a border crossing with Turkey. It said members of jihadi groups had
to withdraw from the town to nearby villages. It said Kurdish gunmen
captured a number of fighters in the area.
The
fighting broke out Tuesday after the Islamic fighters attacked a
Kurdish patrol in the area, capturing a Kurdish gunman. Wide clashes
broke out later in the day after the Nusra Front and the Islamic State
of Iraq and the Levant rejected a truce offer, according to the
Observatory.