At least eight Lebanese Army troops died in ongoing fighting between the regulars and armed Islamic militants in the eastern town of Ersal, the army said in a statement on Sunday.
The troops continued a military operation in Ersal, tracking down the armed groups and engaging them in firefights, the statement said, adding that the extremist gunmen suffered a number of deaths and injuries.
Ersal was targeted with mortar shells, unleashed by the gunmen positioned on its fringes, said the statement, alluding to the town, situated at slopes of the eastern mountainous ridges marking the border line with neighboring Syria.
The army retaliated for the mortar attacks targeting the gunmen positions.
The fighting broke out on Saturday shortly after the army arrested a leading member of the Syrian opposition group, Al-Nusra Front, as he was crossing the borders. According to the Lebanese media, the gunmen sneaked from hideouts in the nearby high, rugged ground into the Lebanese town, burst into a building of the Lebanese Internal Security Force and attacked army troops in and around the town.
Meanwhile in the northern city of Tripoli, the official National News Agency reported the army troops engaged in a firefight with gunmen shortly after they attacked military checkpoints.
The gunmen attacked an army patrol wounding an officer and a soldier, the NNA said. The hooded armed men attacked the army and the troops engaged them in clashes that also wounded a civilian, whose condition was described as critical.
Tripoli has recently witnessed waves of such violence, pitting armed groups that are loyal, or oppose, to the Syrian regime.