Lebanon under more attacks by Syria anti-Assad forces

Syrian conflict’s spillover getting more grim

The Abdullah Azzam Brigade, the Al Qaida-linked Sunni militant group that claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack, made clear the Syrian war was the motive, demanding that Hezbollah pull out its fighters.

“The attack on the Iranian Embassy in Beirut was a twin martyrdom operation by two heroes of the Sunni in Lebanon,” said Shaikh Sirajeddine Zuraiqat, a cleric affiliated with the group, in a message posted on Twitter.

Majid Bin Mohammad Al Majid, the Azzam Brigade’s leader, called in August for Sunnis in Lebanon and Syria to unite against Hezbollah, which he described as the “party of Iran.” The group has claimed responsibility for firing rockets at Israel in the past.

Lebanon still has no government since collapsing in March, and planned elections have been postponed amid wrangling over electoral laws.

“There is no state,” said Jad Kobeissi, a 36-year-old dentist who lives a block from the embassy.

Few residents voiced doubt that the blast was linked to the conflict in Syria. “I was worried one day something like this would happen,” Kobeissi said. “The embassy is an obvious target.”

However, some Lebanese politicians and the Iranian Foreign Ministry were quick to blame Israel, despite the Azzam Brigade’s claim of responsibility.

“The terrorist bombing in front of the Iranian Embassy in Beirut is an inhuman and vicious act perpetrated by Israel and its terror agents,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said.

Hezbollah also pointed a finger at its longtime enemy. Mohammad Raad, head of the group’s parliamentary bloc, said the attack echoed “the racist pattern of the Zionist enemy.”

But a close adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu linked the bombing to Hezbollah’s role in Syria. “Israeli security gains nothing from bloodshed,” said Tzachi Hanegbi, a lawmaker and former intelligence minister. “I think it is a result of the tension in Lebanon following the decision by Hezbollah — or Iran forcing Hezbollah — to participate in Assad’s efforts to survive in Syria.”

The bombing was not the first in a Shiite area of Beirut. In August, an explosion in Hezbollah’s stronghold in the southern suburbs killed at least 21 people. That was followed eight days later by what was seen as a retaliatory attack on two Sunni mosques in the northern city of Tripoli, which killed more than two dozen. Ever since, a Hezbollah-run security cordon has surrounded much of south Beirut, giving the area a siege-like feel.

Hezbollah had braced for a further attack, imposing tight security during the Shiite festival of Ashura last week, where the group’s leader, Hasan Nasrallah, made a rare appearance — and pledged to continue backing Assad in Syria.

Lebanese politicians condemned Tuesday’s bombings. “There is division in the country and tension, which is not helping in reducing the impact of the Syrian war on us,” lawmaker Alan Aoun told the MTV television station at the scene. “It’s causing problems, both socially and politically.”

At a snack shop and supermarket near the blast site, sales assistants wept as they served customers.

“This is too much, it’s devastating,” said Hanadi Nahhas, a 30-year-old employee. “The second bomb was so loud we thought it was an Israeli air strike. Our delivery boy, Mohammed, was killed — he is just 16.”

While the Shia Islamic leadership of Iran and its Hezbollah ally are strongly supportive of Bashar Al Assad’s regime, those fighting against it are almost all Sunni Muslims — many of them home-grown Syrians, but also including jihadis who have travelled to Syria to fight the regime and its backers.

Lebanon’s president, Michel Suleiman, called his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, to express his support. Lebanon’s feuding political blocs, implacably split along regional fault lines, also condemned the blasts and urged restraint.

As state power has crumbled in Syria, sectarianism has grown there and in Lebanon, where, despite their 1,400-year-old schism, Islam’s two main sects have more or less coexisted since both countries were formed from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.

But such an accommodation is increasingly being tested in Syria and across the region, where the two sects live near each other. Iraq has suffered almost daily bombings for the past six months, nearly all of them carried out by extremist Sunni groups, who openly say they are trying to reignite the sectarian war that raged there in 2006-07.

Both Iran and Hezbollah have played lead roles in recent advances by Syrian forces around Aleppo in the north and in rebel-held land south of Damascus. Hezbollah is also believed to be at the vanguard of an offensive in the Qalamoun mountains just east of the Syrian border, which looms as a strategic battleground in the overall fight for control of the country.

With the war raging and regional tensions reverberating, Syrian political opposition leaders have yet to commit to a summit that aims to bring the crisis to a negotiated end. Opposition leaders say they remain opposed to Iran taking part and to Assad playing any future role in Syria.

FACT

Fallout from Syria conflict in Lebanon: timeline
Beirut
Lebanon has been increasingly drawn into the conflict raging in its larger neighbour which has exacerbated tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in both countries. Sunnis mostly support the rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar Al Assad, while Lebanon’s Shiite militant group Hezbollah has intervened militarily in support of his forces.
Following is a timeline of the fallout from the conflict:
2011
June 17: Fighting erupts in Lebanon’s main northern city of Tripoli between Sunni supporters of the rebels and Alawite supporters of the Damascus regime. Six people are killed.
August 8: Former Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri, a Sunni, condemns the “massacre” in Syria.
2012
June: Fighting in Tripoli kills 14 people.
August 9: Former information minister Michel Samaha, said to be close to the Damascus regime in Syria, is arrested and accused of smuggling explosives into Lebanon for use in attacks.
August 20-26: Violence flares again in Tripoli, killing 16 people and wounding 118.
October 19: Lebanese police intelligence chief Wissam Al Hassan, a strong opponent of the Syrian regime, is killed by a car bomb along with seven other people.
2013
March 18: Syrian aircraft strike inside Lebanon for the first time, according to Lebanese and US officials. The strikes hit targets near the Sunni town of Arsal but the Damascus regime denies responsibility.
April 30: Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah says the group’s fighters have intervened in Syria on the side of the Assad government.
May 19-26: New Sunni-Alawi clashes erupt in Tripoli, killing more than 30 people.
June 5: The Syrian army backed by Hezbollah retakes the key town of Qusayr, near the Lebanese border.
June 23-24: Clashes erupt near the southern city of Sidon between the army and supporters of radical Sunni Shaikh Ahmad Al Assir, an outspoken backer of the Syrian rebels, killing 18 soldiers.
August 15: A car bomb in a southern suburb of Beirut kills 27 people.
August 23: Twin car bombs against Sunni mosques in Tripoli kill 45 people, the deadliest attack in Lebanon since the end of the civil war in 1990.
November 19: A double suicide attack targets the Iranian embassy in a Hezbollah stronghold in south Beirut, killing at least 23 people and wounding around 150.
— AFP