Mansour: hostages to be released soon

Lebanese Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour said Wednesday at least 11 Lebanese men kidnapped in Syria would soon be released. Mansour identified the kidnappers as "a splinter group of the armed Syrian opposition," but did not elaborate, al-Manar TV said. Mansour told the al-Jadeed local news network he had received a call Tuesday evening from an Arab dignitary "telling me that the contacts he had made revealed the whereabouts of the abductees and that they will be released in the coming hours." Also Wednesday, Lebanese Parliament member Ali Ammar told The (Beirut) Daily Star his Hezbollah party has received assurances the men kidnapped in Syria would be released. The hostages were abducted in Aleppo Tuesday on two buses while returning from visiting Shiite holy sites in Iran. "Communication on the international, regional and local levels is taking place around the clock in an effort to win their release," Ammar said. Meanwhile, relatives of the abducted men -- reports have put their number at 11 to 13 -- and thousands of supporters gathered in Beirut late Tuesday to demand their release. The official Syrian Arab News Agency said a "group of armed terrorists" kidnapped 11 Lebanese citizens and a Syrian bus driver. The Syrian National Council, which seeks the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad, urged rebels Wednesday to help win the release of the Lebanese hostages. "The Syrian National Council condemns any kidnappings, assault or terrorizing of our Lebanese brothers and demands their immediate release," the SNC said in a statement. Ammar said the kidnappers made no demands but hostages' relatives said they did. "The hostages are being held by an extreme Syrian fundamentalist group in hopes of swapping them for ... comrades held [by Assad's forces]," one relative told The Daily Star.