WADI NAHLEH, Lebanon — Two weeks before he was supposed to get married, Bakr Seif told his mother he was going out to see his fiancee and would be back for lunch. When he did not show up by nighttime, his mother called the fiancee, who said he had not been to visit her.
That day, Dec. 8, was the last time Seif’s mother saw him. Last week, he was among nine people killed in an Iraqi army airstrike targeting suspected militants in eastern Iraq. At least four of them were Lebanese, all from this small, impoverished village near the northern city of Tripoli.
As Lebanon slid deeper into economic misery over recent months, dozens of young men have disappeared from the country’s marginalized north and later surfaced in Iraq, where they are believed to have joined the Islamic State group. The migration has stoked fears of a new wave of radical recruitment, taking advantage of frustration and despair fueled by the economic meltdown and sectarian tensions.
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