Lebanon mourns blast victims

Residents inspect the damage caused by bomb blasts in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Hasan Shaaban / Reuters

Suburbs of Beirut do ‘not feel safe’ to residents any more

Foreign Correspondent

BEIRUT // Lebanon’s schools and universities were closed yesterday as the country marked a day of mourning one day after bombs struck Beirut’s Shiite-majority southern suburbs in the deadliest such attack the capital has seen since the country’s civil war.

With at least 43 dead and more than 200 injured, Thursday’s double suicide bombing in Burj Al Barajneh was the worst attack in Beirut since the country began feeling the backlash of Syria’s war several years ago.

ISIL claimed the attack, in which a suicide bomber on a motorcycle detonated on a crowded street before a second bomber struck crowds gathering to help victims several minutes later.

Lebanese authorities said the body of a third bomber, believed to have been killed by the second blast, was recovered.

In a statement claiming responsibility, ISIL used derogatory language toward Shiites and underlined that the area was a stronghold of Hizbollah, the Lebanese paramilitary group and political party that has been fighting in Syria on behalf of the Syrian government.

Witnesses said the death toll would have been higher if a young furniture maker from the neighbourhood had not tackled the second bomber as he struck.

Residents said the second bomber was attempting to enter a husseiniya, a Shiite religious building used for ceremonies.

Maarouf Al Hussari, 21, was selling croissants from a cart in front of the bakery where he worked when the first bomber struck nearby. “I thought the oven blew up,” he said. “That happened before.”

Seconds later the reality of what had happened set in.

“When I saw all the dead people and a man cut in half, I fainted and woke up here,” he said at the Sahel General Hospital yesterday. His lungs were damaged from the pressure of the blast and from inhaling smoke.

Burj Al Barajneh is an impoverished area of south Beirut. It houses a Palestinian refugee camp – which has become busier since the trouble in Syria began – and a residential and market area. The neighbourhood is next to the district of Haret Hraik, where Hizbollah has its Beirut headquarters.

The blasts were the first attack on a major Lebanese city since bombers struck in Tripoli in January, killing nine. It is the first attack to target Beirut’s southern suburbs since June last year.

In the aftermath of Thursday’s bombing, streets were coated in shards of broken glass. Blood pooled in puddles and streaked the side of a building. A laser display shining on the street to lure customers played its pattern on soldiers, gunmen and distraught relatives of victims.

Outside the nearby Rasul Al Azam Hospital – which has long been barricaded with blast walls to foil bombing attempts – throngs of grieving relatives awaited news of loved ones and Hizbollah fighters attempted to comfort crying women while others dragged away men they deemed suspects.

As workers cleared the broken glass, mangled cars and rubble from the blast sites, occasional bursts of gunfire could be heard as families mourned their dead nearby.

“If they thought this message they sent would bring us to our knees, they sent the wrong message to the wrong people,” said Zouhair Jallouh, the mayor of Burj Al Barajneh, as he watched the clean-up crews working.

“The only way we can survive is to stay on the resistance path and not change our compass,” he said, “resistance” being a common reference to Hizbollah by the group’s supporters.

While residents quickly pointed the finger at ISIL, they also showed suspicion and anger toward their Palestinian neighbours in the camp just a few minutes’ walk from the blast sites.

“We’re 90 per cent sure it was because of the camp,” one resident said.

Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps are no-go zones for Lebanese security sources, leaving security in the hands of a multitude of often competing armed Palestinian factions. Residents said the camp was now being monitored closely by Hizbollah.

Thursday’s blasts were almost certainly a stab at reawakening Lebanon’s recently dormant sectarian strife.

In 2013 and last year, Beirut’s southern suburbs were regularly bombed by Sunni extremist in retaliation for Hizbollah’s entry into Syria’s civil war.

The suburbs were transformed as businesses erected sandbagged fronts and concrete blast walls, the Lebanese army established checkpoints at all entrances to the suburbs and Hizbollah stepped up security inside the neighbourhoods, checking outsiders and patrolling with bomb-sniffing dogs.

Attacks dwindled after Lebanese security forces moved aggressively against Sunni militants following the brief takeover of the border town of Arsal by Al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate, Jabhat Al Nusra, and ISIL in the summer last year.

Despite the relative stability this year, many in Beirut’s southern suburbs do not feel safe.

They said bomb plots were regularly discovered and that so long as Hizbollah were active in the war in Syria, they would remain targets.