Beirut Blasts Kill 23

Updated Nov. 19, 2013 2:08 p.m. ET

Raw footage: Two blasts struck near the Iranian Embassy in Beirut on Tuesday, killing 23 people. Photo: AP.

BEIRUT—Two blasts targeting the Iranian Embassy in Beirut killed 23 people, including an Iranian diplomat, and struck Lebanon’s Shiite heartland in an escalation of spillover sectarian violence from the civil war in Syria.

Photos

A general view of the scene after at least one explosion near the Iranian embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, on Tuesday. European Pressphoto Agency

Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Ghazanfar Roknabadi, said two successive bombs went off five minutes apart.

“There is no doubt the Iranian Embassy was targeted by these two blasts,” he told Al-Manar Television, a station controlled by Lebanon’s Iranian-allied Shiite militant group Hezbollah. Lebanese officials also said the embassy was targeted.
Local media reported that the attacks were suicide bombings. They said the first bomb went off after a man on a motorbike approached an embassy gate and blew himself up after guards opened fired at him. Minutes later, a jeep approached and exploded. They struck a few meters from a busy thoroughfare where traffic was gridlocked.
The Iranian ambassador and local officials couldn’t confirm the attacks were suicide bombs. But they said an investigation was under way, using footage caught by embassy security cameras.
A Lebanese leader of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades—an al Qaeda-affiliated organization designated as terrorist by the U.S.—claimed on Twitter that his group was responsible for the “double suicide operation by two heroes of the Sunnis of Beirut.” He vowed more attacks. Fighters from the Abdullah Azzam Brigades are believed to be battling alongside Sunni rebels in Syria.
The bombings broke three months of relative calm in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a stronghold of Hezbollah that along with Iran has sent fighters to Syria to reinforce Bashar al-Assad’s regime in its war against Sunni-dominated rebels. Some Lebanese Sunni factions back Syria’s largely-Sunni rebels, who have used Lebanese border areas as supply routes and rear base.
The Syrian war transformed into a regional sectarian conflict, pitting Sunni and Shiite Muslims in both countries against each other.
Lebanon and Syria share a border and have been closely intertwined for decades. When the war in Syria began nearly three years ago, Lebanon was still in a fragile recovery from its own 15-year sectarian civil war from 1975 to 1990.
Sporadic violence from Syria bleeding over the border has rocked Lebanon, which has inundated by a million Syrian refugees, threatening to destabilize the country and to suck Lebanon back into civil war as well.
At the scene of the blast, glass and leaves shaken from trees littered streets. Residents said they had seen burned corpses and body parts on the streets afterward. The rescue effort to evacuate nearby buildings continued into the afternoon.
Hajj Yousef Haidar, whose brother lives on the street where the bombs went off, said the attack appeared aimed at killing as many civilians as possible. “What is going on in Lebanon?” asked Mr. Haidar, 57 years old. “This is terrorism and we should all come together to fight it.”
Lebanese officials from all sides of the political divide described the bombings as a terrorist attack. Lebanon’s health ministry said 23 people were killed and 147 injured.
The ambassador and other Iranian officials blamed Israel and “terrorist groups aligned with it” for the attack. However, Tzachi Hanegbi, an Israeli lawmaker from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party, denied the allegation. Iran, Hezbollah and their Lebanese political allies frequently blame Israel for bombings in Shiite areas of Lebanon.
The Syrian regime, allied with Iran, blamed the Gulf states.
“The stench of petrodollars is emanating from all the terror acts that have struck Syria, Lebanon and Iraq,” the Syrian government said in a statement.
The claim of responsibility was made on a Twitter page in the name of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades leader, Sirajeddine Zuraikat. The group didn’t immediately make the claim on jihadist websites commonly used to put out such claims.
“These operations in Lebanon will continue, God willing, until two demands are met,” the Twitter feed said, calling for the withdrawal of Hezbollah and Shiite fighters from Syria and the release of Sunni radicals from Lebanon’s prisons.
The group put out an audio message last year vowing to “punish” Shiite parties in Lebanon if they maintained their support for the Syrian regime. It was designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. last year, which identified it as based both in Lebanon and the Arabian Peninsula. The group carried out a 2010 attack on a Japanese-owned oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz.
Sheik Ibrahim Ansari, the embassy’s cultural attaché, died of his wounds a few hours after the blasts, the Iranian ambassador said. Mr. Ansari took his post in Lebanon a month ago.
He added that Iranian diplomats were proud to die for the “resistance” against Israel. Fars News in Iran reported that Rezvan Fars, the head of security for the embassy who was in charge of the ambassador security, was also killed.
Several guards at the embassy gates were also killed in the blast, the ambassador and Lebanese officials said.
“This gives us more strength…we don’t fear,” the Iranian ambassador said. “I spoke to all diplomats who work in Lebanon and in this area,” he added. “They all say that martyrdom in this path is our right. It is one of the pillars of our humanity…a great pride for all of us.”
Syrian rebels, and their Lebanese Sunni sympathizers, have vowed to strike Hezbollah in Lebanon for its support for the Syrian regime. Shiite-dominated southern Beirut was the target of a series of rocket and car bombs over the summer.
—Josh Mitnick in Tel Aviv contributed to this article.
Write to Nour Malas at nour.malas@wsj.com and Rima Abushakra at rima.abushakra@wsj.com

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