AFP Beirut: Five Lebanese army soldiers were wounded Wednesday when a mortar crashed into their base in the eastern town of Ras Baalbek near the Syrian border, a military source told AFP.

“Five soldiers were wounded after a mortar shell landed inside their base,” the source said, adding that it had been fired by “terrorist groups outside Ras Baalbek”.

“There are no clashes but we are responding now,” the source said.

Militant groups are entrenched in the mountainous border area near Syria and have used the arid terrain to launch attacks on Lebanese security forces.

Earlier this year, five Lebanese soldiers died in clashes with around 200 gunmen who entered Lebanon from the Qalamoun region of Syria.

Pamela Engel

ISIS has been met with some popular support in Iraq and Syria, but much of it might come from people's desire for survival rather than authentic support for the militants' ideology.

Reporters for The Washington Post interviewed dozens of people who have lived under ISIS's rule in Iraq and Syria and found that many people join the terror group out of desperation and a lack of other options.

The quality of life for ISIS fighters and their families much better than it is for those who simply live under the terrorists' control in the group's self-declared "caliphate."

Experts and caliphate residents told Newsweek last month that there is a widening income gap between ISIS fighters and average civilians, who pay taxes to the caliphate's authorities to fund ISIS fighters' salaries.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

A tribal elder says Islamic State (IS) militants have massacred 70 members of a Sunni Arab tribe in Iraq's western province of Anbar.

Sheikh Naim al-Gaud said the 70 members of the Bu Nimr tribe were found shot dead in the village of Khanizir, a day after they were abducted northeast of the provincial capital, Ramadi.

He said the tribesmen were killed because they had relatives serving in Iraq's security forces.

Sheikh Gaud also said they had fled to Khanizir with their families from their homes in Ramadi after IS fighters captured the city in May.

sputniknews.com

A woman reporting for the Lebanese TV channel Al-Mayadeen was shot in the face and wounded by Israeli forces while reporting from an Arab neighborhood in Jerusalem.