Hezbollah sent 'supervising' forces to Syria's Homs, sources say

By Laila Bassam, Suleiman Al-Khalidi and Parisa Hafezi

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese armed group Hezbollah sent a small number of "supervising forces" from Lebanon to Syria overnight to help prevent anti-government fighters from seizing the strategic city of Homs, two senior Lebanese security sources said on Friday.

"Homs must not fall," one of the sources told Reuters, adding that senior officers deployed overnight to oversee some Hezbollah fighters who had been in Syria near the border with Lebanon for years.

A Syrian military officer and two regional officials close to Tehran also told Reuters that elite Hezbollah forces had crossed over from Lebanon and taken up positions in Homs.

The move reflects the dramatic shakeup in Syria's battlegrounds since Monday, when sources close to the group said Hezbollah was not intending to deploy to Syria for now.

At the time, a rebel advance led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a former Al-Qaeda affiliate, had seized the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. But by Thursday, they had captured Hama - a city in Syria's centre - and were bearing down on Homs.

Homs, Syria's largest province, borders Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan and offers key transport routes for Iran to bring military equipment to Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Lebanese security source said Homs was important as a "reservoir" for Hezbollah and other Iran-backed armed groups.

Losing Homs city would isolate the capital Damascus from the Syrian government's coastal strongholds further west.

Western officials told Reuters that Hezbollah fighters were worried they would be attacked by Israel if they deployed to Syria, where Israel's air force has carried out years of strikes against Iran-linked assets.

Hezbollah and Israel exchanged fire across Lebanon's southern border for nearly a year in hostilities triggered by the Gaza war, before Israel went on the offensive in September, killing most of Hezbollah's top leadership.

The fighting ended in a ceasefire that went into effect on Nov. 27, the same day the rebel offensive in Syria began.

(Reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman, Laila Bassam in Beirut, Parisa Hafezi in Dubai; Additional reporting by Alex Cornwell in Doha; writing by Maya Gebeily, William Maclean)