BAALBEK, Lebanon: Shells fired from war-torn Syria killed eight people, including five children, when they rained down on the Lebanese border town of Arsal on Friday, Lebanese officials said.

The attack was the deadliest suffered by Arsal ever since the outbreak of war in neighboring Syria in 2011.

The deaths came as at least 20 rockets and shells launched from Syria hit border areas in the eastern Lebanon Bekaa Valley, which has seen frequent violence related to the Syrian conflict.

Lebanese President Michel Sleiman called on the army to “protect” border villages from such attacks.

“The toll from a cross-border shelling attack against Arsal from Syria has risen to eight, after a woman died from her wounds,” said a security source.

Local official Ahmad Al-Hojairi told AFP that five of the dead were children, three of them from one family, and that all of them had been identified except for a little girl.

The Lebanese army said: “Between 10:45 a.m. (0845 GMT) and noon (1000 GMT), the areas of Ras Baalbek, Al-Kawakh, Al-Buweida, Masharia Al-Qaa, Arsal and Hermel were hit by 20 rockets and shells launched from Syria.”

Arsal is a Sunni area in the Bekaa Valley that hosts thousands of Syrian refugees who have fled the violence in their country.

It has been bombed several times by Syria’s air force, most recently in December in a raid that prompted the Lebanese army to hit back with anti-aircraft fire.

But Friday’s attack was the deadliest to hit Arsal since the outbreak of the war in neighboring Syria nearly three years ago.

“People in Arsal are in a state of panic. They are enraged. We are being made to pay for the crisis in Syria. What happened today is terrifying.” said Hojairi.

“Six or seven rockets launched from Syria” struck a residential area, he said, adding that two of them hit houses.

Arsal’s population sympathises strongly with the revolt in Syria against President Bashar Assad.

Once dominated by Damascus militarily and politically, Lebanon is divided over the Syrian war.

Such divisions have deepened ever since Lebanon’s Shiite movement Hezbollah admitted last May that it was sending fighters into Syria to support Assad’s troops.

President Sleiman renewed his implicit warning to Hezbollah over the impact its involvement in Syria is having in Lebanon.

“The consequences of even deeper involvement in the Syrian crisis is making the Lebanese pay a high price,” Sleiman said.

Sleiman has in the past called on Hezbollah to withdraw its troops from Syria.

On Friday, he also called on “security and military officials to take all relevant measures to protect Lebanese towns and villages on the border with Syria.”

“The priority now is to protect Lebanese areas and their residents from any attack, whoever the attacker may be,” he said.

Caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati also condemned the attack, calling on the Lebanese army to take “the necessary steps to protect Lebanese territory.”

The shelling comes a day after Hermel, a Hezbollah stronghold in the Bekaa Valley, was hit by a car bomb attack that killed three people.

The attack was claimed by the jihadist Al-Nusra Front in Lebanon as a suicide operation.