Iran attache among 23 killed in Beirut blasts
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Two suicide bombers detonated explosions outside the Iranian Embassy in a mainly Shiite district of Beirut yesterday, killing 23 people, including the Iranian cultural attache, apparently in retaliation for Lebanese group Hezbollah’s support for Syrian President Bashar Assad.
An al-Qaida-linked Sunni group claimed responsibility for the attack in the Lebanese capital, saying more would follow unless the Hezbollah withdrew fighters who helped Assad’s military score key victories over Syrian rebels.
The midmorning blasts hit the upmarket neighborhood of Janah, a Hezbollah stronghold, leaving bodies and pools of blood on the glass-strewn street amid burning cars. More than 140 people were wounded, officials said.
A Lebanese security official said the first attacker was on a motorcycle that carried 2 kilograms of explosives. He blew himself up at the main gate of the Iranian mission, damaging the three-story facility.
Less than two minutes later, a second suicide attacker driving a car rigged with 50 kilograms of explosives struck about 10 meters away.
Iranian Ambassador Ghazanfar Roknabadi identified the dead diplomat as Sheik Ibrahim Ansari. He said Ansari took his post in Lebanon a month ago and was overseeing all regional cultural activities.
The street targeted by the suicide bombers includes a building where some of the Iranian diplomats and their families live.
The bombing was one of the deadliest in a string of attacks that have targeted Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon in recent months in a campaign of retaliation by Sunni radicals over its backing of Assad in Syria’s bloody conflict.
In recent weeks, Hezbollah fighters have backed Assad’s troops in a series of victories over rebels, taking back a string of rebel-held towns in Syria.
Senior Hezbollah official Mahmoud Komati told reporters at the scene that the attacks were a direct result of the “successive defeats suffered by (extremists) in Syria.”
He described the blasts as a “message of blood and death” to Iran and Hezbollah for standing by Syria, vowing they would not alter their position.
Lebanon’s sectarian divisions have been inflamed by the war next door. Lebanese Sunnis largely back the rebellion and Shiites largely support Assad — and tensions have repeatedly flared into clashes and bloodshed in Lebanon.
Iran’s foreign minister blamed Israel for the attacks. Hezbollah and Syrian officials indirectly blamed Saudi Arabia, the Sunni Arab kingdom that along with fellow Gulf nation Qatar has been a major backer of Syria’s rebels.
“Each of the terrorist attacks that strike in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq reek of petrodollars,” a Syrian government statement said, in a clear reference to oil-rich Gulf Arab countries.
A Lebanese al-Qaida-linked group, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying they would continue until Hezbollah withdrew from Syria.
The group is active in southern Lebanon and has issued claims in the past for rocket attacks into northern Israel. It also claimed a July 2010 bombing of a Japanese oil tanker in the Persian Gulf and a 2005 rocket attack that narrowly missed a US ship docked at Jordan’s Aqaba Red Sea resort.
In 2011, the Obama administration added a senior member of the group, Saudi citizen Saleh al-Qarawi, to a list of global terrorists subject to US sanctions.
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