UAE, Saudis warn against Lebanon visit

The UAE and Saudi Arabia on Wednesday advised their citizens against travelling to Lebanon and urged them to leave immediately following a mass kidnapping and threats of more abductions, officials said.

Juma Mubarak Al Junaibi, Undersecretary at the UAE Foreign Ministry, said travelling to Lebanon may endanger the lives of Emiratis and asked Emiratis there to contact the embassy.

Gunmen belonging to the powerful Lebanese Meqdad clan took more than 20 hostages, including a Turk, a Saudi and several Syrians, in retaliation for the capture of one of their kinsmen, Hassan Al Meqdad, in Syria’s capital Damascus.

In Syria an air strike killed at least 30 people, including children, and injured more than 200 in the northern border town of Azaz on Wednesday, activists said.

Seven Lebanese hostages were also among the wounded, with four others missing.

As the violence intensified, UN rights investigators accused the Syrian forces of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. The troops and militia were behind the Houla massacre of 108 people in May, said the report. Systematic violations have been authorised at the highest levels of the government.