Lebanon mourns 41 killed
IS claims twin bombings attack
LEBANON was holding a day of mourning yesterday for 41 people killed in twin bombings on a busy shopping street in southern Beirut, the bloodiest such attack for years and claimed by the Islamic State group.
More than 200 people were also wounded, many of them seriously, by the explosions in a narrow shopping street in the Burj al-Barajneh neighbourhood that is a bastion of the Shiite Hezbollah movement.
The attack appeared to mark a return to the campaign against the group between 2013 and last year, ostensibly in revenge for its military support of regime forces in neighbouring Syria’s civil war.
Two men wearing suicide vests carried out the attack, said the army, while the body of a third who had failed to detonate his explosive device was found at the scene of the second blast.
Schools and universities were shut across Lebanon yesterday after Prime Minister Tammam Salam announced a national day of mourning.
The street in the poor, mainly Shiite Muslim neighbourhood, normally home to a market, was stained red with blood according to a photographer, who saw bodies strewn inside nearby shops.
Surrounding buildings were badly damaged by the blasts and security forces were trying to cordon off the scene and keep people from gathering.
Sunni jihadist group IS claimed the attack, saying its “soldiers of the Caliphate” detonated explosives planted on a motorbike on the street, in an online statement.
The statement could not be independently verified, but it followed the usual format of IS claims of responsibility and was circulated on jihadist online accounts. — AFP