ISIL originally targeted Al Rassoul Al Aazam hospital in Beirut’s southern suburbs during the planning phase for its attack on Lebanon’s largest city. But tight security made the attackers switch to Burj Al Barajneh, a mixed Shiite and Palestinian enclave. In doing so, the attackers put a busy mosque on a crowded street in their crosshairs.
Less than 48 hours after the attacks, the Lebanese security authorities – working with army intelligence and the ministry of interior – had arrested nine people.
In the days leading up to the event, an ISIL leader met the bombers and asked them to carry out five explosions in the same district at the same time. Two explosions happened within five minutes of each other, killing three suicide bombers and 43 civilians and injuring 239 more, some of whom are still in critical condition.
Lebanese people of all creeds and political persuasions have condemned the killings and are afraid of ISIL stretching deeper into Lebanon, as the group seeks to hurt Hizbollah for its continued support of Bashar Al Assad’s regime.
The landscape in Syria has changed since Russia began its campaign of air strikes. Hizbollah is now part and parcel of the Russia-Iran-Syria axis that is defending the Assad regime.
The deployment of 5,000 Hizbollah fighters in Qalamoun and Aleppo to work side by side with the Syrian army and operate under Russian-controlled airspace is changing the equation of the war and strengthening the arm of the regime, as ISIL loses territory and manpower. The extremist group is increasingly cornered as it fights the Russians and their proxies on one hand and the western alliance on the other.
The Beirut bombings should be understood within this context. They were certainly intended as an open provocation to Hizbollah and they seek to expand the theatre of violence into Lebanon.
For 18 months Lebanon was spared operations on this scale. The Burj Al Barajneh bombings were also meant as a warning to all those countries fighting ISIL, as the extremist group seeks to demonstrate that it can reach out and hurt its enemies far beyond the battlefields of Syria and Iraq.
A day after the events in Beirut, the Paris attacks underscored the scope of ISIL’s network of targets, especially as it arrived so soon after the downing of Metrojet Flight 9268 in Sinai and the attacks on Ankara in Turkey.
Observers in Beirut and elsewhere in the Middle East see all this as the beginning of a new phase of terrorist activities.
Even the style of the bombings points to this: two bombers arriving on a motorcycle carrying several kilos of explosives. They parked the vehicle on a side street and walked to the mosque with machine guns in hand. The attackers did not seek to hide their intentions, rather they were prepared to walk towards their destination in full view.
The planning and execution of the attacks were also quite sophisticated. The terrorists rented apartments in the Palestinian camp of Burj Al Barajneh and in the Christian stronghold of Ashrafieh in east Beirut as their temporary command centres.
Many believe that the battlefield defeats are driving ISIL to seek revenge. The triple event of the massacre in Paris, the downing of the Russian plane and the Beirut bombings prove that ISIL will carry its fight to sensitive destinations. Lebanon as a government and a people are on alert.
Maha Samara is a journalist in Beirut
