Hezbollah widens role in Syria, with 28 fighters reported killed

BEIRUT - Hezbollah was pulled more deeply into Syria's civil war as 28 guerrillas from the Lebanese Shiite militant group were killed and dozens wounded while fighting rebels, Syria activists said Monday.

The intense battle drove rebels from large parts of the town of Qusair, part of a withering government offensive aimed at securing a strategic land corridor from Damascus to the Mediterranean coast.

Hezbollah-affiliated hospitals in Lebanon urged blood donations through mosque loudspeakers and ambulances raced along the Damascus road in a stark indication of the group's increasingly prominent role in Syria.

The overt Hezbollah involvement - several funerals for group members were held Monday in Lebanon - edges the war further into a regional sectarian conflict pitting the Middle East's Iranian-backed Shiite axis against Sunnis.

It also raised tensions considerably in Lebanon, where Hezbollah has come under harsh criticism for its involvement in the civil war next door.

A staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Hezbollah is heavily invested in the survival of the regime and is known to have sent fighters to aid government forces. The Iranian-backed group's growing role in the conflict also points to the deeply sectarian nature of the war in Syria, in which a rebellion driven by the country's Sunni majority seeks to overthrow a regime dominated by Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Clashes continued for the second day in the northern city of Tripoli, Lebanon, where Sunnis and Alawites battled in a spillover from the fighting in Qusair.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks Syria's civil war, said that more than 70 Hezbollah fighters have also been wounded in the fighting around Qusair.

The White House said that President Obama telephoned Lebanon's president and expressed concern about Hezbollah's "active and growing role in Syria, fighting on behalf of the Assad regime, which is counter to the Lebanese government's policies."

More than 70,000 people have been killed since the uprising against Assad erupted in March 2011 and escalated into a civil war. The Syrian government and Hezbollah deny there is an uprising in Syria, portraying the war as a foreign-backed conspiracy driven by Israel, the United States and its gulf Arab allies.