BEIRUT — Bombs destroyed two com­muter buses today in the small Chris­t­ian com­mu­nity of Ain Alaq, in the moun­tains north of Beirut.
Reports of fatal­i­ties var­ied, but ranged from three (Red Cross, secu­rity forces) to 12 (LBC and other media sources.) Ten to 20 were wounded. The first bomb was appar­ently attached to the under­car­riage of the first bus while the sec­ond was in a back seat on the sec­ond, accord­ing to my fixer, who is try­ing to find more info. I’ll update if this changes.
The wounded were civil­ians pos­si­bly trav­el­ing to work, mark­ing a change in the “two-year cam­paign of bomb­ings and assassinations”:http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L13582123.htm that has wracked Lebanon since the killing of Rafik Hariri on Feb. 14, 2005. Before, the attacks were either tar­geted assas­si­na­tions of well-known anti-Syrian politi­cians and jour­nal­ists or small bombs exploded in build­ings late at night so as to min­i­mize casu­al­ties. This seems aimed at Iraq– or Israel-style ter­ror. Ran­dom, any­where, piti­less.
Details are still emerg­ing, but spec­u­la­tion is ram­pant. Was this Syria? Hezbol­lah? CIA? (A Hezbol­lah spokesman said it was the lat­ter.) Was it a warn­ing to the March 14 coali­tion not to attend the big rally planned for down­town tomor­row to mark the two-year anniver­sary of Hariri’s death?
One intrigu­ing con­nec­tion is to Elias Murr, Lebanon’s defense min­is­ter. The buses orig­i­nated in Bteghrin, the home of the Murr fam­ily — they’re the major clan there — and some have won­dered if this could be a response to Murr’s “refusal last week to return a truck full of Hezbol­lah weapons”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6345761.stm inter­cepted by the Lebanese Army?
Elias Murr was the tar­get of a failed assas­si­na­tion in July 2005.
I’m not con­vinced of that, as it would be a com­plete turn-around for Hezbol­lah, who have not (yet) turned their weapons on their fel­low Lebanese — a point of pride for the group.
Also, the attack hap­pened near Bik­faya, the ances­tral home of the Gemayel clan. Sev­eral of the dead were Gemayels. Lebanon’s indus­try min­is­ter, Pierre Gemayel “was assassinated”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/2006/11/pierre_gemayel_has_been_assass.php in Novem­ber.
Michel Murr, the defense minister’s father, was at the site of the bomb­ing and said it was a mes­sage for all Lebanese to come together and tran­scend pol­i­tics. That’s a nice sen­ti­ment, but it’s almost assuredly _not_ the mes­sage the bombers were try­ing to send.
More likely, it was a warn­ing to March 14.
“They are try­ing to sab­o­tage tomorrow’s meet­ing,” said Ahmad Fat­fat, the for­mer inte­rior min­is­ter. “They are try­ing to divide the Chris­tians. … The peo­ple who are doing this don’t want the peo­ple to come together and it’s another link in the chain” of assas­si­na­tions.
“I can­not believe any Lebanese is capa­ble of doing such a ter­ri­ble thing,” he added.
Fat­fat also said the bombs were placed on the buses yes­ter­day, although he declined to say how he knew that.
Obvi­ously, Fat­fat is not-so-subtlely point­ing the fin­ger at Syria. A Hezbol­lah spokesman said the same thing, but blamed the CIA instead of Syria.
I wit­nessed this in Iraq, too, by the way, early in the insur­gency. In 2004, when the vio­lence was much more spo­radic and rare than it is now, Iraqis would often tell me, “These bombs could not come from Iraqis. No Iraqi would hurt another Iraqi. This must be the Israelis or CIA.“
There’s always a nat­ural ten­dency to believe that out­siders are the ones doing the killing. Wit­ness the imme­di­ate reac­tion to the Mur­rah Build­ing in 1995. Every­one imme­di­ately sus­pected Arab ter­ror­ism, not home-grown white suprema­cists.
But right now, espe­cially on the eve of the anniver­sary of the killing of Hariri, every­one in Lebanon — Hezbol­lah, March 14, etc. — is bank­ing on national unity for their own pur­poses. “Hariri was for all of us,” as many say. Other par­ties — Syria, espe­cially, but pos­si­bly Israel — would love to see Lebanese at each oth­ers’ throats. Syria could use any vio­lence as an “I told you so” excuse to inter­vene again, and Israel prob­a­bly wouldn’t mind see­ing Hezbol­lah on the defen­sive in its own coun­try.
(Mind you, I’m not accus­ing Israel of today’s bomb­ing; I’m just ana­lyz­ing who might stand to gain from Lebanese dis­cord.)
*UNRELATED (?) NEWS:* The Grand Mufti of Lebanon, Sheikh Moham­mad Rashid Qab­bani, the high­est rank­ing Sunni cleric in coun­try, claims in a press release to LBC that he was heck­led and threat­ened by the pro-Syrian, Hezbollah-led March 8 pro­test­ers as he led prayers at Hariri’s grave in Martyr’s Square down­town today. He says he was told to leave or they would burn his car.
(March 8 is a coali­tion of mostly Shi’ite par­ties and some Chris­tians, and includes Hezbol­lah, Amal, the Syr­ian Social Nation­al­ist Party and the Chris­t­ian par­ties of Michel Aoun and Suleiman Fran­jieh. With the excep­tion of Aoun, they are all solidly pro-Syrian. Aoun just wants to be pres­i­dent and will hitch his horse to whichever wagon he thinks will win.)
Also, in this morning’s _San Fran­cisco Chronicle_, I have a story about the “rearm­ing of the Lebanese factions.”:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/13/MNG62O3F5U1.DTL&hw=allbritton&sn=001&sc=1000 It might become very rel­e­vant after today.