Sectarian violence erupted in eastern Lebanon early Saturday after the al Qaeda-linked al-Nusra front said it had killed a captured Lebanese policeman to avenge the arrest of Islamic militants’ wives and children.

Residents in Lebanon’s mainly Shiite Bekaa Valley region bordering Syria seemed to be taking out their anger over the policeman’s murder by the al Qaeda-linked Sunni extremist group based in Syria on local Sunnis.

The body of an unidentified Sunni man who had been shot dead was found on a road in a suspected revenge killing.

Gunmen also abducted an unknown number of Sunni residents from the area, security sources said.

Angry residents were blocking roads and set fire to tyres in the village of Bazzalieh, an AFP correspondent at the scene said.

The village is not far from the border town of Arsal where officials detained a former wife and young daughter of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of the jihadist Islamic State (IS) group that has seized large parts of Syria and Iraq.

The flare-up came after al-Nusra posted a photograph that it said showed the execution of detained Lebanese policeman Ali al-Bazaal, in a statement on its Twitter account picked up by the SITE terrorism watchdog.

Bazaal was one of around 30 Lebanese soldiers and policemen abducted by jihadists in August during fighting in Arsal.

“If the sisters that were unjustly arrested are not released, then after a short period of time the death sentence will be executed against another prisoner we hold,” al-Nusra said.

Lebanese security sources said they were trying to verify the claim.

The group did not identify the women and children it said Lebanon was holding, nor did it say how many were missing.

On Wednesday, Lebanon’s interior minister said authorities there were holding the daughter and former wife of IS group chief Baghdadi.

While both the Islamic State jihadist group and al-Nusra are based in neighbouring Syria, they have clashed with Lebanese border forces and with the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, which supports Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Last month a roadside bomb wounded three Lebanese soldiers near Arsal, where in August troops fought a fierce gun battle with jihadists who streamed across the border.

Fighting ended with a truce mediated by clerics, but the jihadists took the Lebanese soliders and police hostages with them.

At least four have since been executed and Qatari-led efforts to free the rest have so far failed.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)