Sunni Islamists kidnap three Hezbollah fighters

Bahrain blames explosion that killed one and injured another on the Lebanese-based Shi’ite group.

Jabhat Al-Nusra militants (photo credit: REUTERS)
Jabhat Al-Nusra militants
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Syria’s al-Qaida branch, Nusra Front, reportedly kidnapped three Hezbollah fighters from with in the Qalamoun region of Syria, a Saudi newspaper reported on Tuesday.
The kidnapping took place on Monday, according to sources quoted in the Okaz newspaper, the Lebanese Daily Star reported. The names of the three Hezbollah fighters are, Hasan Mansour, Ali Husseini, and Mohammad Abbas.
Hezbollah has not said anything about the report.
Meanwhile, Bahrain blamed the Lebanese Shi’ite group for a terrorist attack on its soil on Monday after a separate explosion killed a Bahraini citizen and wounded an expatriate man on Tuesday, the Interior Ministry said on its Twitter account.
Political tensions have been running high in Bahrain, which has a Shi'ite majority population but whose rulers are Sunni Muslims, since the opposition boycotted elections last month.
The ministry called Tuesday's attack a "terrorist explosion" and said police were on the scene of the blast in a village southwest of the capital Manama. Bahrain's largest Shi'ite opposition group, Al Wefaq, condemned the attack.
On Monday, a Jordanian officer on a security exchange program in Bahrain was killed in the village of Damistan, also southwest of Manama, Bahrain's interior ministry website said.
Corporal Ali Mohammed Ali was killed on duty by a locally-made remote-controlled bomb, the ministry said. Bahrain's foreign minister has described the incident as a terrorist attack using a bomb made by Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim militant group Hezbollah.
The island kingdom, which is home to the US Fifth Fleet, was swept by unrest during the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings when the majority Shi'ites demanded political reforms.