BEIRUT, April 7 (Reuters) – The Israeli military has refrained from striking a key border crossing between Syria and Lebanon after both pressed \u200cthe U.S. on the need to keep it open, a Lebanese \u200csource familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The Israeli military on April 4 issued a warning \u200bfor the Masnaa crossing, the main border point between Lebanon and Syria, saying it would strike it “in the near future” because Lebanese armed group Hezbollah was using it to smuggle weapons.<\/p>\n
The crossing has been used by both Lebanese and Syrians fleeing \u200cthe expanding war in Lebanon, \u2060where nearly 1,500 people have been killed by Israeli strikes and military operations since March 2. Hezbollah has launched rockets and \u2060drones into Israel and is fighting Israeli troops in southern Lebanon.<\/p>\n
After Israel’s warning on Saturday, Syria’s border authority said Masnaa was not being used for any military \u200bpurposes but \u200bthat it would be closed temporarily to avoid \u200bany casualties from a future \u200cstrike.<\/p>\n
Lebanese border officials told Reuters on Sunday that talks were under way to try to spare the crossing.<\/p>\n
The Lebanese source said on Tuesday that Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam had been working with Syrian counterparts, and had secured a U.S. guarantee that Masnaa would not be struck.<\/p>\n
The border was still closed \u200cfor the time being, the source said.<\/p>\n
The \u200bIsraeli military did not immediately respond to questions \u200bfrom Reuters on whether it \u200bwould refrain from striking the Masnaa crossing as a result \u200cof Syrian-Lebanese efforts to mediate.<\/p>\n
Israeli public \u200bbroadcaster Kan had \u200breported on Monday that the U.S. had asked Israel to suspend its attack on Masnaa, citing political reasons.<\/p>\n
The Israeli military declined to comment on \u200bthe Kan report. The \u200cU.S. embassy in Lebanon did not immediately respond to a request \u200bfor comment.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Maya Gebeily; Additional reporting by Pesha Magid and \u200bAlexander Cornwell; Editing by Alison Williams)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BEIRUT, April 7 (Reuters) – The Israeli military has refrained from striking a key border crossing between Syria…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[2166,37,72,22118,22119,973,95,20930],"class_list":{"0":"post-56631","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-syria","8":"tag-border-crossing","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-israeli-military","11":"tag-lebanese-border","12":"tag-masnaa","13":"tag-southern-lebanon","14":"tag-syria","15":"tag-syria-and-lebanon"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116366035133580238","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}