23 killed in suicide bombing at Iran Embassy in Beirut
Associated Press
BEIRUT
Suicide bombers struck the Iranian Embassy on Tuesday, killing 23 people, including a diplomat, and wounding more than 140 others in a “message of blood and death” to Tehran and Hezbollah — both supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The double bombing in a Shiite district of Beirut pulled Lebanon further into a conflict that has torn apart the deeply divided country, and came as Assad’s troops, aided by Hezbollah militants, captured a key town near the Lebanese border from rebels.
The bombing was one of the deadliest in a series of attacks targeting Hezbollah and Shiite strongholds in Lebanon in recent months.
An al-Qaida-linked group said it carried out the attack as payback for Hezbollah’s backing of Assad forces against the mainly Sunni rebels as the Syrian civil war increasingly becomes a confrontation between regional powers.
The Syrian army’s border offensive is part of a larger government push that started last month and has seen forces loyal to Assad firmly seizing the momentum in the war, taking one rebel stronghold after another.
The attacks raised fears in Lebanon that Islamic extremists, now on the defensive in Syria, would increasingly hit back in Lebanon. The country is suffering the effects of competing sectarian loyalties.
“People fight outside [Lebanon], but send their messages through Lebanon. With bombs,” said a mechanic whose store windows were shattered by the blasts.
The midmorning explosions hit the neighborhood of Janah, a Hezbollah stronghold and home to several embassies and upscale apartments, leaving bodies and pools of blood on the glass-strewn street amid burning cars.