Beirut blast kills five in Hezbollah area

Lebanese citizens gather at the site of a car bomb explosion in a stronghold of the Shiite Hezbollah group at the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2014. A large explosion took place during rush hour in the Haret Hreik neighborhood. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Lebanese citizens gather at the site of a car bomb explosion in a stronghold of the Shiite Hezbollah group at the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2014. A large explosion took place during rush hour in the Haret Hreik neighborhood. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

BEIRUT - An explosion tore through a crowded commercial street Thursday in a south Beirut neighborhood that is bastion of support for the Shiite group Hezbollah, killing at least five people, setting cars ablaze and sending a column of black smoke above the Beirut skyline.

It was the latest in a wave of attacks to hit Lebanon in recent months as the civil war in Syria increasingly spills over into its smaller neighbor. The violence has targeted both Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods, further stoking sectarian tensions that already are running high as each community in Lebanon lines up with its brethren in Syria on opposing sides of the war.

The Lebanese army said 44 pounds of explosives were placed in a dark green sport utility vehicle. It said authorities were investigating how the explosives were set off.

A security official said human remains were found in and around the vehicle, and that authorities were investigating whether the blast could be a suicide bombing. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media, said a DNA test will be conducted to try identify the person who was in the car.

Lebanon’s official National News Agency said at least five people were killed and more than 50 wounded in the explosion, which left the mangled wreckage of cars in the street and blew out the windows of storefronts. The director of the Bahman Hospital, where dozens of the wounded were taken, said some of the injured were in critical condition.

Images from Associated Press television showed firefighters putting out the smoldering hulks of several cars that had been set ablaze. Crowds swarmed around ambulances waiting for the wounded with their lights flashing. At least one building had part of its facade blown off, and several neighboring buildings also were damaged.

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV said the explosion occurred “a few hundred meters from the politburo of Hezbollah.” It said the political office was not the target of the attack. Hezbollah’s deputy chief Sheik Naim Kassim told al-Manar that the blast was aimed at “the whole of Lebanon.”

“Suddenly, the whole area went bright and we started running away,” said Ali Oleik, an accountant who works in a nearby office building. “I saw two bodies on the street, one of a woman and another of a man on a motorcycle who was totally deformed.”

The explosion happened a week after a car bombing in downtown Beirut killed prominent Sunni politician Mohammed Chatah. The former finance minister and top aide to ex-Prime Minister Saad Hariri was critical of Syrian President Bashar Assad and his Hezbollah allies.

Hezbollah’s once seemingly impenetrable bastion of support - Beirut’s southern suburbs - also has been hit several times in recent months.

In November, suicide bombers targeted the Iranian Embassy in Beirut, killing at least 23 people. Iran is the chief patron of Hezbollah and an ally of Syria, and the Islamic Republic’s embassy is located in a Hezbollah district.

Another blast in August killed about 20 people in the Beir al-Abed district, near the Haret Hreik neighborhood where Thursday’s bombing took place.

Two weeks later, a double bombing outside two Sunni mosques in the northern city of Tripoli killed scores more.

The attacks raise the specter of a sharply divided Lebanon being pulled further into the Syrian conflict, which is being fought on increasingly sectarian lines pitting Sunnis against Shiites. Syria-based Sunni rebels and militant Islamist groups fighting to topple Assad have threatened to target Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon in retaliation for intervening on behalf of his regime in the conflict.

Kassim said the blast underscored the need for Lebanon to break its political deadlock. “Lebanon is heading toward destruction if there is no political understanding,” he told al-Manar.

The last government resigned in March, leaving a weak caretaker, and the country’s factions have been unable to agree on a replacement. Hezbollah and its allies are calling for a national unity Cabinet.

The group’s Western-backed rivals refuse this, saying the militant group will have to pull out its fighters from Syria before that.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said the targeting of the south Beirut area, less than a week after the bombing that killed Chatah “proves that the hand of terrorism does not differentiate between the Lebanese.”

“The fire burning in more than one region of Lebanon portends what is worse if we do not meet and deal with our problems away from the language of defiance and exclusion,” he said in a statement.

Information for this article was contributed by Ryan Lucas and Zeina Karam of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 01/03/2014

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