A convoy carrying members of Hizbullah was hit by a roadside bomb near the Syrian border on Tuesday, July 16. The bomb killed one Hizbullah security official and wounded two, security sources said.

The conflict is spilling over Syria’s northern border, where Turkish troops returned fire, after stray bullets from Syria struck the police headquarters and several homes in the Turkish border town of Ceylanpinar, the Turkish military said.

Lebanon, whose own 15-year civil war ended in 1990, is struggling to stay on the sidelines of the conflict next door, but car bombs and clashes between groups supporting rival sides in Syria have become increasingly common.

Last week, a car bomb wounded more than 50 people in a southern Beirut suburb controlled by Hizbullah, Lebanon’s most powerful political-military faction. In late May, rockets were fired at another Hizbullah area of southern Beirut.

The victims of Tuesday’s bomb were Hizbullah security officials travelling in a convoy of two vehicles heading towards Syria. A barrage of gunfire hit the convoy after the blast, security sources said.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack, the third on the group since May. Syrian rebels have threatened to strike Hizbullah in Lebanon following its military intervention in Syria on the side of President Bashar al-Assad.

Pictures from the scene showed black smoke rising from the cars. The windscreen of one of the vehicles had several bullet holes.

A truck driver who witnessed the attack said he had heard a blast, after which the Hezbollah GMC sport utility vehicle slowed to a halt.

Three or four gunmen arrived in another car and started firing at the vehicle. “Then they got back in their car and fled,” the driver said.

A Turkish man and a 15-year-old boy were killed in the Turkish border town of Ceylanpinar by stray bullets from the fighting, Turkish security sources and health officials said. The Turkish army said troops later returned fire.

Ankara was quick to condemn Assad’s crackdown on protesters in 2011 but has been wary of unilateral intervention, especially after Kurdish separatists and Islamist militants moved into northern areas following a retreat by Syrian state forces.

The latest clashes between Kurdish fighters, who broadly favor creating an autonomous Kurdish region in Syria, and Islamist, Arabs, began on Tuesday after Nusra fighters attacked a Kurdish patrol and took a gunman hostage, the Observatory said.

In southern Syria, a car bomb killed several civilians, including women and children in the town of Kanaker, Syrian state television said. The Observatory quoted activists as saying the blast had killed seven people in the town, which is government-held but besieged by rebels.

The Observatory also reported clashes and bombardment elsewhere in Syria, including the divided northern city of Aleppo and on the outskirts of the capital Damascus.

Syrian artillery hit the eastern Damascus district of Ain Terma, where rebels have managed to get a foothold on the fringes of the government-controlled city centre.

Government forces have renewed their assault on Damascus suburbs held by the rebels, taking some ground this week.

Diplomats have said Assad wants to take a firmer grip on Damascus to secure a corridor from the capital to his loyalist Alawite strongholds on the Mediterranean coast.

Gunmen killed Mohammad Darra Jamo, a well-known media defender of Assad in Lebanon on Wednesday, July 17.

Although the Lebanese Army said in a statement that it apprehended suspects, who had killed Jamo for personal, not political motives, his death still has an impact Lebanese politics, because it was initially perceived as a spillover of the Syrian crisis to Lebanon.

Lebanese television LBC reported that Jamo’s wife’s brother and nephew were in army custody for carrying out the crime.

Jamo, a commentator for Syrian state media, who often appeared on Arab TV channels to promote Assad’s cause, was killed by gunmen at his home in the southern Shi’a Muslim town of Sarafand, where he had lived with his Lebanese wife for 20 years. Hizbullah’s security control in south Lebanon is normally tight.

Syrian state media initially blamed an “armed terrorist group” for the killing, which took place at around 2 a.m. and the Syrian Information Ministry called it a “heinous crime.”

Jamo’s wife, who might have played a role in the murder, was with him when he was shot but was not hurt. She said on Hizbullah’s al-Manar Television channel that officials from Syria’s ruling Baath party had called her husband on the day before he died and warned him to be careful.

Jamo’s daughter and two of his bodyguards were wounded and were transferred to the Aladdin Hospital.

— Reuters, Al Akhbar, TAAN