Twin blasts in Lebanese city kill 42
Print Edition
Twin car bombs exploded outside mosques in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli yesterday, killing at least 42 people, wounding over 500 and wreaking major destruction in the country’s second-largest city, Lebanese Health Ministry officials said.
Footage aired on local TV showed thick, black smoke billowing over the city and bodies scattered beside burning cars.
The blasts hit amid soaring tensions in Lebanon as a result of Syria’s civil war, which has sharply polarized the country along sectarian lines and between supporters and opponents of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. It was the second such bombing in just over a week.
Tripoli, a predominantly Sunni Muslim city, has seen frequent clashes between Sunnis and Alawites, a Shiite offshoot sect to which Assad belongs. But the city has rarely seen such explosions in recent years.
Yesterday’s blasts mark the first time in years that such explosions have targeted Sunni strongholds and were bound to raise sectarian tensions in the country to new levels.
Attacks have become common in the past few months against Shiite strongholds in Lebanon, particularly following the open participation of the militant Shiite Hezbollah group on behalf of Assad in Syria’s civil war.
On August 15, a car bomb rocked a Shiite stronghold of Hezbollah in the southern suburbs of Beirut, killing 27 people and wounding more than 300. A less powerful car bomb targeted the same area on July 9, wounding more than 50.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for yesterday’s attacks, which raised the ominous specter of Iraqi-style tit-for-tat explosions pitting Sunnis against Shiites.
Samir Darwish, a 47-year-old contractor, said he was in a Tripoli square when he heard the first explosion and ran in the direction of the fire to the Salam Mosque, one of the two targeted.
“I came here and saw the catastrophe. Bloodied people were running in the street, several other dead bodies were scattered on the ground,” he said.
“It looked like doomsday, death was everywhere.”
An official said one of the blasts exploded outside the Taqwa mosque, the usual place of prayer for Sheik Salem Rafei, a Salafi cleric opposed to Hezbollah, which holds sway in much of the country.
Hezbollah swiftly condemned the bombings, describing it as “terrorist bombing” and part of a “criminal project that aims to sow the seeds of civil strife between the Lebanese and drag them into sectarian and ethnic infighting.”
In a strongly worded statement, it expressed “utmost solidarity and unity with our brothers in the beloved city of Tripoli.”
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