| San Francisco Chronicle | - |
(Updates
death toll in first paragraph.) Feb. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Two cars packed
with explosives blew up in Hezbollah's stronghold in Beirut, killing at
least six people, in the latest attack on the pro-Iran militant group
that's fighting on President Bashar ...
Six Killed as Explosions Hit Hezbollah’s Beirut Stronghold
Alaa Shahine and Donna Abu-Nasr, ©2014 Bloomberg News
Published 5:25 pm, Wednesday, February 19, 2014
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(Updates death toll in first paragraph.)
--With assistance from Inal Ersan in Dubai. Editors: Amy Teibel, Karl Maier
To contact the reporters on this story: Alaa Shahine in Dubai at asalha@bloomberg.net; Donna Abu-Nasr in Dubai at dabunasr@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net
end quote from:
Feb. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Two cars packed with explosives blew up in Hezbollah’s
stronghold in Beirut, killing at least six people, in the latest attack
on the pro-Iran militant group that’s fighting on President Bashar al-Assad’s side in Syria.
The blasts today near the Iranian cultural office also wounded 128 people, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported, citing the Red Cross. The Iranian Embassy
said there were no “serious injuries” among its staff, the news agency
reported. Unidentified human remains could take the death toll higher,
Health Minister Wael Abou Faour said.
The Abdullah Azzam Brigades, a Sunni militant group linked to al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility in a posting on Twitter and said it would continue to attack Hezbollah. The group’s leader, Majed al-Majed, died last month from a chronic illness after the Lebanese army detained him.
The
Syrian civil war has deepened rifts between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in
Lebanon, leading to a wave of attacks on religious, civilian and
political targets. The bombings began after Hezbollah acknowledged last
year that its fighters were supporting Assad, whose Alawite sect is a
Shiite offshoot, against the mainly Sunni rebels.
Targeting Iran
The two vehicles used by the attackers were rigged with a combined 350 pounds (160 kilograms) of explosives, according to NNA.
The
Abdullah Azzam Brigades said they would “continue to target Iran and
its party in Lebanon” until Brigades members are freed from Lebanese
prisons and Hezbollah forces are withdrawn from Syria.
“This is part of a regular pattern, probably one of the most intense Lebanon has ever seen,” Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center
in Qatar, said by phone from Paris. He said the formation of a
government over the weekend, ending an 11-month power vacuum, “is the
best antidote to the instability, but it’s not enough.”
Syria’s
war and domestic unrest have slowed economic growth in Lebanon, the
most indebted Arab country, to 1.5 percent in the past three years, from
7 percent in 2010, according to the International Monetary Fund.
--With assistance from Inal Ersan in Dubai. Editors: Amy Teibel, Karl Maier
To contact the reporters on this story: Alaa Shahine in Dubai at asalha@bloomberg.net; Donna Abu-Nasr in Dubai at dabunasr@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net
end quote from:
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