ISIS claims deadly twin Beirut explosions
By Mariam Karouny and Laila Bassam Reuters, Beirut Thursday, 12 November 2015
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group claimed responsibility for Thursday’s double attack on a Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut which killed at least 37 people. The group said in a statement posted on Twitter by its supporters, that its members blew up a bike loaded with explosives in a street in the Borj al-Barajneh area and when people gathered, a suicide bomber blew himself up among them causing more casualties and killing 40 people. The bombings were the first attacks for more than a year in a stronghold of the Iran-backed movement, which has sent members to Syria to fight alongside President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in the country’s civil war. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Several bomb blasts struck Lebanon in June last year, in a spillover of violence linked to Syria. The war in Lebanon’s larger neighbor, with which it shares a border of more than 300 kilometers, has ignited sectarian strife in the multi-confessional country, leading to bombings and fighting between supporters of the opposing sides in Syria. Hezbollah supports Assad; Sunni militants support rebels fighting against him and his Shiite backers. Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk gave the latest death toll. He also said a third suicide bomber had been killed by one of the explosions before he could detonate his own bomb. His body was found nearby. Medics rushed to treat the wounded after the explosions, which damaged shopfronts and left the street stained with blood and littered with broken glass. It was a blow to Hezbollah’s tight security measures in the area, which were strengthened following bombings last year. The army had also set up checkpoints around the southern suburb entrances. Lebanon’s Prime Minister Tammam Salam condemned the attacks as “unjustifiable,” and called for unity against “plans to create strife” in the country, urging officials to overcome their differences.The bombers struck as Lebanese lawmakers held a legislative session for the first time in over a year. An ongoing political crisis has left the country without a president for 17 months, with the government failing to take even basic decisions.Religious leaders warned last year that in the absence of a head of state, sectarian strife was threatening a country that was gripped by its own civil war from 1975 to 1990.
At Least 40 Dead, 181 Hurt as 2 Suicide Bombers Target Bourj al-Barajneh
Agencies/November 12/15/At least 37 people were killed and 181 others wounded Thursday as twin bombings rocked the Beirut southern suburb of Bourj al-Barajneh, a Hizbullah stronghold. NNA said the attack was carried out by two suicide bombers who blew up their explosive vests in the Ain al-Sikkeh street. The Internal Security Forces said two men on foot set off suicide vests in front of a shopping center. The Lebanese Red Cross said 37 people had been killed and 181 wounded in the blasts, which happened around 6:00 pm according to witnesses. An AFP photographer saw extensive damage to buildings around the site of the blast and bodies inside some of the nearby shops. There was blood on the streets, and security forces were trying to cordon off the scene and keep people from gathering. The blast is the first to target Beirut’s southern suburbs since June 2014, when a suicide car bomb killed a General Security officer who had tried to stop the bomber. But prior to that, a string of attacks targeted Hizbullah strongholds throughout the country. Between July 2013 and February 2014, there were nine attacks on Hizbullah bastions, most claimed by jihadist extremists.The groups claimed the attacks were in revenge for Hizbullah’s decision to send thousands of fighters into neighboring Syria to support President Bashar Assad’s forces against an Islamist-dominated uprising.
Terror attacks foiled in Lebanon’s Tripoli
Now Lebanon/ November 12/15/BEIRUT – Two terror attacks have been foiled in northern Lebanon’s Tripoli, less than a week after two explosions ripped through the border town of Arsal. The Lebanese army on Thursday morning dismantled an improvised explosive device next to Kanaan Café, which is located near the city’s Sunni-populated Qobbeh neighborhood. Lebanon’s National News Agency reported that that IED was rigged in a box placed alongside a road near American Square, which is not far from the Alawite quarter of Jabal Mohsen. According to a statement issued by the Lebanese Armed Forces, the IED consisted of 10 kilograms of explosives and metal shards wrapped in electrical tape attached to five detonators. The Lebanese Armed Forces added that investigations are underway to discover who left the IED—which was primed for explosion—outside the café.Hours after the IED in Tripoli’s Qobbeh was dismantled, reports of another foiled terror attack emerged, this time a suicide bombing. “The Internal Security Forces Information Branch last night arrested a national in [Tripoli’s] Qobbeh carrying a suicide vest ready for detonation,” Lebanese state media reported. The report identified the suspect as Ibrahim J., but would not go into further details on the incident, while the ISF has yet to issue a statement on the matter. The local Tripoli News Network online outlet said that the suspect had been fighting in Syria before returning to Lebanon. The security incidents in Tripoli come after the deadly explosion last Thursday that targeted a gathering of Sunni clerics in Arsal as well as the IED blast the next day that hit a Lebanese Armed Forces convoy. Tripoli itself has been relatively peaceful since the Lebanese government in April 2014 instituted a security plan in the northern city that brought an end to the sectarian clashes that would regularly erupt between Alawite militants of Jabal Mohsen and their Sunni neighbors. Despite the security plan, Islamist militants sympathetic to ISIS in Tripoli and north Lebanon launched a series of attacks against the Lebanese army in late October 2014 that ended after days of heavy fighting that left 11 LAF troops dead. Less than two months later, two suicide bombers detonated themselves in a café in the Jabal Mohsen area, killing at least nine people in attack the Al-Nusra Front took credit for.