Our prayers with the Lebanese Army and hostage.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Islamist gunmen seized a police station in a town in Lebanon on the border with Syria and killed two Lebanese soldiers on Saturday after Lebanese security forces arrested one of their leaders, security sources and a rebel fighter said.

Two Lebanese civilians were also killed trying to prevent fighters of the Nusra Front, al Qaeda's branch in Syria, from storming the security building, Lebanese state media reported. Arsal, a Sunni Muslim town where tens of thousands of refugees have fled fighting across the mountainous border, has frequently seen spillover from Syria's more than three-year-old civil war.

One Nusra Front fighter said the fighters had seized the police station in response to the arrest of one of the group's leaders, Emad Jumaa. Lebanese authorities said in a statement he had been arrested at a checkpoint near Arsal around noon. Syria's rebels are overwhelmingly Sunni, while President Bashar al-Assad is from the Shi'ite-derived Alawite sect and has been supported by Shi'ite militias from Lebanon and Iraq. Over 170,000 people have died in the conflict. Lebanese security sources and state media said two soldiers were killed in the fighting in Arsal.

Just across the border in the mountainous Qalamoun region, at least 50 rebels were killed by pro-Assad forces backed by the Lebanese Shi'ite militia Hezbollah.

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