Hezbollah ready to send more troops to Syria: Official

By Enes Kanli

BEIRUT (AA) – Lebanon’s Hezbollah is prepared to send additional troops to war-torn Syria to help the Assad regime fight armed opposition groups, a leading Hezbollah official said Monday.

"In these circumstances, we should increase our troop strength in Syria," Nabil Qaouk, head of Hezbollah’s executive board, said while delivering an address in southern Lebanon.

"We have no hesitation about doing this," he added.

Last month, Mustafa Badreddine, a top Hezbollah military commander, was killed in an artillery attack in Damascus.

Hezbollah has fought alongside Assad regime forces since 2011 when Syria fell into a devastating civil war after the government cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity and disproportional force.

The Lebanese Shia group has not disclosed how many of its members have been killed in Syria, but the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says more than 1,000 Hezbollah fighters have been killed in the war-torn country since the conflict began.

* Anadolu Agency Correspondent Ahmet Sait Akcay contributed to this report from Ankara