| It's becoming a pretty common occurrence now. Golly. I wonder who could possibly be behind the bombs? |
A bomb caused a large explosion in a suburb of east Beirut, a security source said on Saturday, but there were no immediate reports of casualties. Ambulances and rescue workers rushed to the scene, witnesses said. "A large bomb exploded near a commercial centre in Sin Al Fil," said the security source who declined to be named. Two explosions in the past week have targeted commercial areas in the anti-Syrian Christian heartland, killing three people and wounding 16. The assassination of former prime minister Rafik Al Hariri on February. 14 has plunged Lebanon into its biggest political crisis since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war. Lebanon's opposition who blame Syria for Hariri's death urged the country's Syrian-backed security chiefs on Saturday to resign to make way for an international probe into the killing. Syria denies involvement in the assassination. The opposition seized on mass street protests to force the pro-Syrian government to resign last month and Damascus to bow to international pressure to withdraw the forces it poured into the country early in the civil war.
More, from Beirut Daily Star...
East Beirut was rocked by a huge explosion, the third blast in the past week, that a police officer said was caused by a car bomb and which left eight people hurt according to local media. One of the injured was said to be an Indian national. "It was a car bomb explosion," an officer said after another outbreak of violence that was certain to heighten fears of a resurgence in the sort of communal strife that devastated Lebanon during its 1975-1990 civil war.
An AFP photographer reported seeing a burned out car several meters (yards) from the site of the explosion outside a building in an industrial district near Dekouaneh. But the police press office said only that the explosion occurred in a plastics products factory, without giving a cause of the blast. Five buildings and shops in the area were in flames. "It's an apocalyptic sight," said one witness. The explosion occurred at 9:30 pm (1930 GMT) and resonated throughout the capital, shaking buildings on hills to the east of the capital.