Beirut: Fear of more attacks gripped residents of Beirut Friday, a day after twin bombings claimed by the Daesh killed at least 44 people and wounded hundreds in an apparent attempt by the radical Islamist militants to ignite Lebanon’s combustible sectarian divisions.
Fatigue-clad security personnel fanned out across the shaky capital’s southern suburbs. Enhanced inspections of vehicles and residents sought to ward off further attacks that would heighten already simmering tensions between Lebanon’s religious communities, including Sunni and Shiite Muslims.
Two suicide bombers struck civilians in a largely Shiite area of the city at rush hour Thursday, targeting a stronghold of the powerful Shiite Hezbollah militia in what analysts said may have been retaliation for the group’s military involvement in the Syrian civil war.
The twin bombings were the worst bombings to hit Beirut in years. Assailants attacked the city’s teeming Burj Al Barajeh neighbourhood, killing 43 people, including children.
Stunned residents of the capital were in mourning Friday as schools and universities closed. Lebanese Prime Minister Tammam Salam called an emergency meeting with ministers and military officials, the Reuters news agency reported.
Sectarian tensions in Lebanon have centered on the nearly five-year-old Syrian conflict. Many Sunnis support the Sunni-led rebellion there, while Hezbollah is fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar Al Assad’s forces in a war that has slammed an already strained Lebanon with a massive new influx of refugees.
Such attacks in the past have been carried out by Islamist extremists angered by Hezbollah’s entry into the Syrian civil war. The Lebanese militia is backed by Iran, which also is an ardent supporter of Al Assad’s government against the rebellion.
The bombings in Lebanon had stopped about a year and a half ago after a Hezbollah offensive along the Syria-Lebanon border subdued the militants who had been directing attacks in the capital. Those militants were linked to such extremist groups as Jabhat Al Nusra, Syria’s Al Qaida affiliate, and Daesh.
The lull in bombings also resulted from greater cooperation between Hezbollah and Lebanon’s Sunni politicians. That coordination became more urgent as Daesh made rapid territorial gains in Iraq and Syria and appeared to threaten Lebanon’s tenuous stability.
In a statement translated by the Israeli-run SITE Intelligence Group, Daesh said the first bomber Thursday struck with an explosives-rigged motorcycle, followed by a second assailant wearing a suicide vest.
The statement, published on Twitter and other social media, said the group targeted the Hezbollah “stronghold.” The statement’s authenticity could not be independently verified.
Lebanese Health Minister Wael Abu Faour said a third suicide bomber was killed when the second attacker detonated his explosives, preventing that third person from detonating his payload. The two other bombers struck close together in the notoriously congested area of the city during the evening rush hour, apparently to maximize the number of victims, Lebanese officials said.
At the scene of the attack, mangled bodies lay in pools of blood and broken glass as people shouted for help and tried to find missing loved ones. Security personnel who had rushed to the scene appeared stunned by the carnage. Ambulances could be heard speeding to and from the scene late into the night, while hospitals and aid groups issued public requests for blood donations.
Salam, the prime minister, called for a national day of mourning Thursday evening and an end to the sectarian-driven squabbles that have crippled Lebanon’s government to the point of even hampering trash collection in Beirut.
“I pray that this tragedy is enough to wake up politicians so that they can put their differences aside so we can protect the country,” Salam said in a statement.
Over the past year, much of Beirut’s Shiite-dominated southern suburbs have been put on lockdown, with checkpoints and patrols by the military and Hezbollah fighters closely scrutinising all that comes into the area.
Thursday’s attack is a blow to Hezbollah’s security in the capital, and it comes as Lebanon increasingly struggles with the multifaceted fall-out from the devastating civil war in neighbouring Syria.
Lebanon’s diverse religious groups maintain tense relations with each other that can easily explode into violence. Factions in the country fought a devastating 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990.
World powers are scheduled to meet in Vienna this weekend to discuss ways of ending the Syrian conflict, which has killed more than 250,000 people and displaced millions. The gathering is backed by Washington and Moscow, which support opposing sides in the war, and signals rising international urgency to end a conflict that has empowered extremists and aggravated already simmering sectarian tension in the region.
Still, the chances for any sudden diplomatic breakthrough appear to be slim. Differences over what to do with Al Assad in a post-conflict transition still divide the opposing sides.
As many as 1.5 million Syrians have taken refuge in Lebanon, a country of barely 4 million people, straining its economy and the brittle relations among its many religious groups.
Lebanese politicians have failed to come to agreement for the past 17 months over selecting a president. The paralysis resulted in a garbage-collection crisis that left festering mounds of trash in the streets of Beirut and prompted large anti-government protests over the summer.
Rising militancy among disaffected Sunnis in the northern port city of Tripoli has proved especially difficult for authorities.
Militants in the city have fought in Syria with extremist groups. Last year, many returned to Tripoli to stage a small revolt that the military put down.