Beirut: A car bomb killed at least five people in south Beirut on Thursday, the fourth attack to hit the Hezbollah bastion since the Lebanese Shiite militant group intervened in Syria in April, officials said.
The bombing came just weeks after a twin suicide bombing killed 25 people at the Iranian embassy in the same area as Sunni hardliners again penetrated tight security in Hezbollah’s stronghold in the capital’s southern suburbs.
Hezbollah’s public confirmation last April that its fighters had intervened in the civil war alongside President Bashar Al Assad’s forces outraged Lebanese Sunnis, most of whom sympathise with the Syrian rebels, and made it a target for Sunni hardliners.
At least 20 people were wounded in the blast that ripped through the densely populated Haret Hreik area, a health ministry source told AFP, citing a preliminary toll.
Hezbollah’s Al Manar television aired footage of bystanders scrambling to douse burning vehicles in a car park beneath a building whose facade had been burned out.
“The terrorist explosion targeted a densely populated residential area, just 150 to 200 metres away from Hezbollah’s political bureau,” the television channel reported, although it added that the building was not thought to have been the target.
The district is a symbolic one for Hezbollah, which once based many of its leadership institutions in the area. Al Manar television’s studios were once just 200 metres away.
Much of the neighbourhood was reduced to rubble during the massive Israeli air bombing that accompanied its 2006 war with Hezbollah, but it has since been rebuilt.
The blast hit the busy Al Arid Street commercial district. An AFP photographer saw at least three shops blown out.
Panicked residents scurried around the streets as Al Manar broadcast warnings to leave the area for fear of further bombs.
The official National News Agency reported that the explosion was caused by an explosives-packed four-wheel-drive vehicle.
British ambassador Tom Fletcher tweeted: “Condemn unequivocally today’s callous attack in Beirut. Lebanese civilians again victims. Thoughts with their families and emergency teams.”
The bombing came on the heels of a twin suicide bombing that hit the Iranian embassy in south Beirut on November 19, killing 25 people.
It also came just a day after Defence Minister Fayez Ghosn revealed that Lebanese troops had arrested the leader of the Al Qaida-linked group, which claimed it was behind the embassy attack.
Saudi national Majid Al Majid, “emir” of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, was being interrogated at a secret location, Ghosn said, without specifying when he was arrested.
Riyadh welcomed Majid’s arrest, a Saudi-owned daily Al Hayat reported on Thursday.
The group was formed in 2009 and is believed to have branches in both the Arabian Peninsula and Lebanon.
