Lebanon’s Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammad Rashid Qabbani rejected on Monday calls on Sunni soldiers to defect from the army, saying they promote sedition and leads to chaos.

Lebanon’s Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammad Rashid Qabbani rejected on Monday calls on Sunni soldiers to defect from the army, saying they promote sedition and leads to chaos, local Naharnet website reported.

“It's not allowed to engage in battles with the army under any pretexts,” Qabbani said in a statement.

He appealed in a televised speech on the Lebanese to hold on to the army, stressing that “those who were responsible for the assault on the army should be held accountable.”

Qabbani said that the “security chaos in (the southern city of) Sidon and the (northern city of) Tripoli aims at distracting the army from its main duty along the border.”

At least sixteen Lebanese soldiers were killed in less than 24 hours in clashes with partisans of Salafist cleric Ahmad al-Assir in the Sidon suburb of Abra.

The Lebanese Army launched on Sunday a wide-scale military operation against Assir’s strongholds in the region, after his partisans attacked one of the Army post in Sidon.