Lebanese Syria Hostage Release Delayed, Massacre Claimed
Lebanon said on Friday that a group of Lebanese Shi’ites kidnapped in Syria had been freed and were safe in Turkey, but produced no sign of the hostages at the centre of a kidnap drama heightening tensions over the conflict in neighboring Syria.
The twist in a hostage drama that has inflamed political tensions in a country divided between foes and friends of the uprising in Syria came as Syrian activists said government troops killed at least 50 people in the centre of the country.
The account of the killings underscored the relentlessness of the violence in Syria’s 14-month-old revolt against President Bashar al-Assad, which has thrown Lebanon’s delicate sect-based politics into the country’s worst unrest in years.