All of the Lebanese truck drivers bar one have been released after being abducted by jihadis on the Syrian-Jordanian Nasib crossing, the truckers’ union chief said Saturday.
“They are still holding only one, and they are bargaining on his truck’s load,” Naim Sawaya told The Daily Star by phone. “They want either a ransom, or the apples stocked in the truck.”
Islamist gunmen believed to be from the Nusra Front had kidnapped around 10 truck drivers Thursday at the Nasib crossing in southern Syria.
The drivers were prevented from crossing into Jordan, and instead were held by the gunmen on the Syrian side of the border, Sawaya said, adding that the gunmen were looting trucks and other vehicles stranded on the eastern side of the border.
Syrian rebels took control of the major southern crossing Wednesday night, a day after Jordanian authorities had announced border closures, in particular the Jaber crossing.
Media outlets posted a video allegedly showing a member of the Free Syrian Army with the Lebanese truckers, who said that they were “free from the abduction of [Syrian] regime forces.”
He went on to claim that the Syrian army had been using the drivers as “human shields,” and that they were “liberated” by a FSA First Unit operation.
Three of the men said to be the drivers revealed in the video that they were from the villages of Taanayel and Bar Elias in eastern Lebanon.
