Dinniyeh Man Killed Fighting in Idlib's Battles

A Lebanese resident of the northern city of Tripoli has died fighting alongside jihadists in the northwestern city of Idlib, media reports said on Sunday.

“Lebanese national Mustafa Khodr was killed in a suicide operation during battles he fought alongside the militants in Idlib,” Lebanon's NBN television said.

Khodr's death was also confirmed by pro-jihadist Twitter accounts. Some of them said “the brother Abu Acid al-Lubnani, Mustafa Khodr, was martyred in the invasion of Idlib.”

The tweeters also published alleged pictures of the Lebanese militant.

The aforementioned sources did not report the date of death but the Facebook page Tripoli News Network said he was killed on Saturday.

TNN said Khodr originally hails from the northern region of Dinniyeh but was a resident of Tripoli's al-Qobbeh district.

“He left Tripoli around a year ago to join al-Nusra Front in Syria, where he was killed,” it added.

On Saturday, al-Nusra and its Islamist allies seized Idlib after fierce clashes, making it only the second provincial capital to be lost by the regime in more than four years of war.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said street fighting had raged through the night after the rebels entered Idlib Friday evening in an assault that began three days earlier.

Around 2,000 al-Nusra and allied fighters took part in the battle, according to the Observatory, while the regime launched some 150 air strikes in a bid to hold off the attack.

At least 130 people were killed in the fighting, according to the Observatory, which said some of the city's residents had fled.

In early March, another northern Lebanese young man, Mustafa Khaled Seif, was also killed in Syria while combating alongside al-Nusra Front.

Earlier, reports said Lebanese national Abou Quthaifa al-Traboulsi was killed in Syria's town of Kobane while fighting with the Islamic State jihadist group.

And on March 2, Hassan Ghandour of the southern city of Sidon was reported to have been killed in Syria.

A number of Lebanese from Tripoli, Sidon, and the North have joined extremist groups involved in the conflict in Syria that erupted in 2011.

Hizbullah is meanwhile combating alongside the country's ruling regime and has sent elite forces across the border.

Y.R.