Hezbollah has threatened a ‘long war’with ISIS as the Lebanese capital reels from it’s deadliest terror attack in years.
At least 50 people died and 250 were wounded in a twin suicide attack on Thursday night in Lebanon’s capital Beirut.
The attacks, claimed by ISIS, took place near the Burj al-Barajneh Palestinian camps, a predominantly Shia suburb in the south of the city, and were detonated during rush hour as the streets were filled with people traveling home.
BYPASS THE CENSORS
Sign up to get unfiltered news delivered straight to your inbox.
You can unsubscribe any time. By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use
37 dead and 181 injured until now in the #Burj_Al_Barajneh explosion pic.twitter.com/BfOxamWWLi
— Lebanese Red Cross (@RedCrossLebanon) November 12, 2015
The blasts are believed to be retribution for Hezbollah’s opposition to ISIS in Syria.
The Kremlin has said that the Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed readiness to cooperate closely with Lebanese authorities in countering the terrorist group.
Robert Fisk reports via The Independent:
The Lebanese were waiting for these latest attacks for weeks.
General Abbas Ibrahim, the head of Lebanon’s “General Security” apparatus, has been saying for months that he is “fighting Isis” – which is perfectly true – and his men, along with the Lebanese army, have for the past two weeks been raiding the homes of Sunni Islamists in Tripoli and around Sidon, reportedly finding explosives and at least one suicide vest. The sinister black Isis flag can now be seen in both Tripoli and hanging over the main street of the Palestinian Ein el-Helwe refugee camp in Sidon.
This does not mean Isis is about to “take over” Lebanon. Nor does it imply a sectarian conflict is about to overwhelm the nation that suffered its own 15-year civil war, which ended a quarter of a century ago. But the Isis struggle against the Russians, Hezbollah, the Iranians, the Syrian regime, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s military rule in Egypt and the Sunni Arab Gulf states will consume the innocent anywhere in the region, and perhaps outside it.
Lebanon’s own security apparatus has for months been trying to dislodge an Isis outfit around the Sunni town of Ersal in the far north-east of Lebanon, on the very border with Syria, while General Ibrahim and his colleagues were fearful that Isis might target the huge running marathon in Beirut last Sunday.
Police on bicycles could be seen along the Corniche day and night, talking to gloomy-faced young men with pistols ill-concealed in their trouser pockets, in the hope of preventing an Isis bombing of seafront tourists.
But Isis decided to strike at its old Hezbollah antagonists. It has hit the southern suburbs before, and it almost managed to destroy the Iranian embassy in Beirut when two suicide bombers tried to blast down the gates to the compound.
However, Thursday night’s attack took weeks to plan, according to the same security men who have been trying to prevent such suicide bombings. The two motorcycle bombers must have moved many times through the same Bourj al-Barajneh streets close to the community centre, the market, the bakery and the Hezbollah-run hospital which they eventually targeted.
It’s not easy to move past both the army’s checkpoints at Bourj al-Barajneh and Hezbollah’s own militia barrages. The Isis claim of responsibility was as coldly delivered as its boast of bombing the Russian airliner over Egypt, and Hezbollah, whose thousands of fighters have fought for Assad’s army in Syria – hundreds of whom have paid for this campaign with their lives – delivered its equally bleak reply. This struggle against Isis and its fellow Islamists, Hezbollah said, would be “a long war”.
Lebanon’s own politicians uttered the sort of condemnation that now comes like confetti in a country with a parliament that can scarcely meet because of sectarian squabbling, and with a cabinet that is unable to agree on garbage collection; where the prime minister constantly threatens to resign, and where there has not been a president for a year and a half. There were “plans to create strife”, one minister said, forlornly.
Isis long ago proved that it goes for the jugular, sometimes, as we know, in the most literal fashion. But does the Russian and now the Hezbollah assault also suggest that Isis is under serious pressure, if only temporarily, before the weight of its multiple enemies? Perhaps. Safer, though, to take seriously the words of Hezbollah. It’s going to be a long war.
Niamh Harris
Be the first to comment