BEIRUT -- The roadblocks and sandbags are back, cafes and hotels are nearly empty, and many of the tourists are gone.
Anxiety is gripping Lebanon after a spate of suicide bombings, and an ongoing security sweep targeting militants -- some of them who had been staying in four-star Beirut hotels -- has triggered a wave of cancellations of hotel and flight bookings in a country already on edge.
The militants involved are said by security officials to be part of a network of terrorist sleeper cells planning suicide bombings targeting security leaders and civilians. That has fueled concerns that Sunni extremists surging in Iraq and Syria plan to take their fight to Lebanon next.
In Beirut, crowds are thinner. Part of the seaside Duroy hotel is still slightly blackened after a suicide bomber blew himself up during a police raid in June. At the high-end Beirut Souks shopping complex in the downtown business district, the passages between shops are nearly empty.
"In the month or two before the incident at the Duroy, we were seeing a lot of Saudi, Iraqi tourists," said a 36-year-old bookstore manager in downtown Beirut. "We really thought that the start of this summer was better than the last one."
"Then the bombings and arrests happened, and we didn't see them anymore," she added, asking to remain anonymous because she was not authorized by her employer to speak to journalists.
Lebanon, a country with a history of civil strife, has been affected by the civil war raging in neighboring Syria over the past three years. In addition to the influx of more than 1 million Syrian refugees, the conflict has inflamed tensions among Lebanon's long-feuding sects, causing violence, including street clashes and bombings.
The country is sharply split between those who back the overwhelmingly Sunni rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad, and those who support him, including the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which has sent its fighters to shore up Assad's forces.
The recent cancellations cap a downward trend in the number of tourists to Lebanon since the Syrian conflict began. Tourism Minister Michel Pharaon said the number of tourists in 2013 dropped by 1 million from the 2.3 million tourists who visited Lebanon in 2010. The number of visitors for the first five months of 2014 was down 9 percent from the same period last year, though the ministry had no figures for June and July.
After relative calm for nearly three months, a new wave of violence broke out last month, coinciding with fighting in nearby Iraq, where militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant have taken over large parts of the country. In one week beginning June 20, a suicide attacker blew up his car near a checkpoint in eastern Lebanon, another near a cafe in southern Beirut and a third blew himself up at the Duroy to avoid arrest.
The explosions killed two people and wounded others. Security forces searching for the militants have raided several hotels in Beirut, upsetting tourists, some of whom headed to the airport immediately afterward. A military prosecutor on Monday charged 28 people with planning bombing attacks and with belonging to the Islamic State.
Now, instead of a relatively calm summer, workers put up roadblocks to guard against car bombs. Guards at malls search shoppers more meticulously. At the World Cup Fan Park in Beirut, organizers erected metal detectors at two entrances to the complex. Security guards go through personal belongings before allowing fans to enter.
Pharaon said Lebanon's security situation is better than elsewhere in the region. But, he said, if there is a militant "insistence to target Lebanon, this will impact not just on the tourism sector but [also] the overall situation in Lebanon."
A Section on 07/13/2014