Truce Between Hezbollah Fighters, Militants Starts in Syria

BEIRUT — A two-day truce agreed on between Lebanese Hezbollah fighters in a Syrian border town and militant and rebels groups there went into effect on Wednesday, a Lebanese TV station and activists said.

The cease-fire silenced the guns in the town of Zabadani and two northern Shiite villages, Foua and Kfarya, according to the Hezbollah's TV channel Al-Manar and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Syrian government troops and their Hezbollah allies have been trying to fully capture the one-time rebel stronghold of Zabadani for more than a month.

A coalition of rebel groups which calls itself Jaysh al-Fateh, or Conquest Army, retaliated by attacking the besieged Foua and Kfarya in Idlib province, which are home to mostly Shiite villagers. A large number of civilians have been trapped there by the fighting.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/08/12/world/middleeast/ap-ml-syria.html