Arrest head of Qaeda.

Lebanese troops arrest head of Qaeda-linked group

The 'emir' of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades was arrested
 by the intelligence services of the Lebanese
 army in Beirut. (File photo: Reuters)

Al Arabiya News |1st jan 2013 :: Lebanese troops arrested the leader of the al-Qaeda-linked group responsible for a double suicide bombing at the Iranian embassy in Lebanon in November, the defense minister told Agence France-Presse on Wednesday.

Maged al-Maged, the "emir" of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, "was arrested by the intelligence services of the Lebanese army in Beirut," Defense Minister Fayez Ghosn said, without specifying when the arrest took place.

"He was wanted by the Lebanese authorities and is currently being interrogated in secret," the minister added.

On Wednesday, Sirajeddin Zreikat, member of the Sunni Muslim extremist group, appeared to have had his Twitter account suspended.

Zreikat has claimed responsibility for attack on the Iranian embassy in Beirut which killed 25 people.

He also warned there would be more attacks in Lebanon, if Hezbollah continued to send troops to support President Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria's on going civil war.

In an interview with Al Arabiya News on the day of the embassy attack, former Iranian President Abolhassan Banisadr said “What is happening in Syria is an international war, all regional parties are involved. Iran, Lebanon and Turkey are heavily involved,” adding that the “Syrian and Lebanese people are the victims of this global war.”(Courtesy : Al Arabiya )

Lebanon braces for US strike.

Lebanon braces for US strike.

A Syrian boy looks out from his tent at a temporary refugee
 camp in the eastern Lebanese town of Marj near the border
 with Syria on Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2013. The Lebanese are
 on the frontline of the latest west Asian crisis as the US laid
 the groundwork for a possible punitive strike.AP Photo

BEIRUT | 04 Sep 2013 :: Up in a small village on Mount Lebanon, an elderly man, Antoine, recounts the horrors of the Lebanese civil war (1975-90). “I had a machine gun. I had an M16 and a Kalashnikov,” he said calmly. “It was a dirty war. We don’t want that again” Not far, across a ridge, lies Syria. He reflects on what that war might bring to his small, coastal country. “We will not return to our civil war,” Antoine says. “We experienced it already. We saw that it is fruitless. We will not return to it.”

Scars of the Lebanese civil war dot the country, but monumentally so in Beirut. During the Battle of the Hotels in the early years of the war, the Christian Phalangists took control of the Holiday Inn in West Beirut to use as a base against the Lebanese National Movement. Today, the Holiday Inn stands as a sentinel of the destruction. At its base sit a force of armoured carriers of the Lebanese army. The floors above are rattled with bullet holes and missile craters. The Holiday Inn would be an artefact in the Museum of Futile Wars. A taxi driver from Idlib, Syria, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, weaves his old Renault past the Holiday Inn. He points frantically at the building and says, “Surya, Surya,” the Arabic for Syria. Previously he had described the devastation in his native city, from where he had fled two years ago. “We had to go,” he said. “Our building had become the frontline.”

The southern suburbs of Beirut, Dahieh, bristle with activity in preparation for more car bombs or even an aerial strike from Israel. Hezbollah, whose main Beirut base is in these neighbourhoods, is constantly on alert for some kind of attack. It is an organisation that is founded on the defence of this fragile country, whose sovereignty has been threatened since it came into existence as a modern state in 1943. Conversations in the area are often punctuated with fears about Israeli agents on the ground or Israeli drones flying overhead.(Courtesy:The Hindu)

Death toll in Lebanon bombings rises to 47; al-Qaeda blames Hezbollah.

Death toll in Lebanon bombings rises to 47; al-Qaeda blames Hezbollah.

Sheikh who is linked to Sunni group friendly with Hezbollah arrested as suspect, after surveillance video shows him at site of explosion

BEIRUT | 24 Aug 2013 ::  Lebanese security forces arrested a suspect on Saturday in connection with the devastating double bombing the day before that killed at least 47 people in the northern city of Tripoli, the state news agency said.

The National News Agency identified the suspect as Sheik Ahmad al-Ghareeb, and said police took him into custody at his home in the Miniyeh region outside Tripoli. It said al-Ghareeb, who has ties to a Sunni organization that enjoys good relations with Lebanon’s powerful Shiite Hezbollah militant group, appears in surveillance video at the site of one of the explosions.

The coordinated explosions Friday outside two mosques in Tripoli, a predominantly Sunni city, raised already simmering sectarian tensions in fragile Lebanon, heightening fears the country could be slipping into a cycle of revenge attacks between its Sunni and Shiite communities. For many Lebanese, the bombings also were seen as the latest evidence that Syria’s bloody civil war — with its dark sectarian overtones — is increasingly drawing in its smaller neighbor.

Lebanese police officials said Saturday 47 people were killed and more than 500 wounded in the attack. Some 300 people were still in the hospital a day after the attack, 65 of them in critical condition, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

The United States, United Nations, and Arab League strongly condemned the violence and the loss of innocent lives.

Meanwhile, al-Qaeda claimed Saturday that Hezbollah, backed by Iran, was behind the bombings in Tripoli. The organization’s North African branch, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, said via social media that it was “certain” that Hezbollah was behind the “heinous act” in Lebanon. The organization also vowed to retaliate for the attack.

For its part, Iran said the instability in Lebanon plays into the hands of “the Zionists,” aka Israel.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Araqchi “strongly condemned” the terror attacks and said “takfiri,” or Sunni Muslim extremists, were trying to sow unrest and create strife between the different communities in Lebanon, Iran’s news agency IRNA reported.(Courtesy:The Times of Israel)

Twin blasts kill 29 in Lebanese city of Tripoli.

Twin blasts kill 29 in Lebanese city of Tripoli.

Hezbollah condemns attacks outside two mosques in the northern city; health minister says over 350 wounded

TRIPOLI | Lebanon  | 23 Aug 2013 ::  Twin car bombs exploded outside mosques in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli Friday, killing at least 29 people, wounding over 350 and wreaking major destruction in the country’s second largest city, Lebanese Health Ministry officials said.

Footage aired on local TV showed thick, black smoke billowing over the city and bodies scattered beside burning cars in scenes reminiscent of Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war

The blasts hit amid soaring tensions in Lebanon as a result of Syria’s civil war, which has sharply polarized the country along sectarian lines and between supporters and opponents of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. It was the second such bombing in just over a week, showing the degree to which the tiny country is being consumed by the raging war next door.

Tripoli, a predominantly Sunni Muslim city, has seen frequent clashes between Sunnis and Alawites, a Shiite offshoot sect to which Assad belongs. But the city itself has rarely seen such explosions in recent years.

Friday’s blasts mark the first time in years that such explosions have targeted Sunni strongholds and were bound to raise sectarian tensions in the country to new levels. It was also the most powerful and deadliest in Tripoli since the end of the civil war.(Courtesy:Times of Israel)

36 Muslim Brotherhood members die in Egypt.

36 Muslim Brotherhood members die in Egypt.

CAIRO | 21 Aug 2013 :: At least 36 members of the Muslim Brotherhood were killed in a riot in Egypt when they attempted to escape while being moved to a jail, state news agency MENA reported.

Armed clashes broke out Sunday between security forces and militants, who intercepted and attacked police vehicles carrying the Muslim Brotherhood detainees to the Abu Zaabal prison near Cairo, Xinhua said Monday.
The clashes took place before the police vehicles entered the prison.
The detainees tried to escape with the help of the militants, who took a police officer hostage. The security men fired tear gas shells in response. Some detainees suffered from suffocation while several militants were shot dead.
More than 600 people have been sent to 15 days in custody pending investigation over Saturday''s clashes at Al-Fatah mosque which left at least 79 dead.(Courtesy:News24)

Car Bomb in Lebanon Kills at Least 22.

Car Bomb in Lebanon Kills at Least 22.

BEIRUT | 16 Aug 2013 :: The death toll from a powerful car bomb that ripped through a southern suburb of Beirut has risen to 22, Lebanon’s interior minister said Friday.

The minister, Marwan Charbel, also said officials were conducting DNA tests on body parts discovered near the vehicle that blew up Thursday to try to determine whether the explosion was the work of a suicide bomber.

The car bomb struck a bustling street in the Rweiss district in Beirut’s southern suburbs, an overwhelmingly Shiite area and stronghold of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. The explosion sent a massive plume of black smoke billowing into the sky, set several cars ablaze and blew out the fronts of buildings on the street.

The bombing was the second in just over a month to hit one of the Shiite group’s bastions of support, and the deadliest in decades. Many people in Lebanon see the attacks as retaliation for Hezbollah’s armed support for President Bashar Assad in neighboring Syria’s civil war.

The group’s fighters played a key role in a recent regime victory in the town of Qusair near the Lebanese border, and Syrian activists say Hezbollah guerrillas are now aiding a regime offensive in the besieged city of Homs.

Syrian rebels have threatened to retaliate against Hezbollah for intervening on behalf of the Assad regime, and Thursday’s car bombing raises the worrying specter of Lebanon being pulled further into the Syrian civil war, which is being fought on increasingly sectarian lines pitting Sunnis against Shiites.

Tensions between Lebanon’s own Sunni and Shiite communities have risen sharply, particularly since Hezbollah began fighting openly in Syria. Lebanese Sunnis support the rebels fighting to topple Assad, a member of a Shiite offshoot sect.(Courtesy:Epoch Times)

13 said killed as blast rocks Hezbollah stronghold.

13 said killed as blast rocks Hezbollah stronghold.

Officials say car bomb attack — the second in as many months — likely backlash for Shi’ite militia’s involvement in Syria

Smoke billows over a Hezbullah stronghold in Lebanon
in the wake of a car bombing attack, Thursday, August 15,
 2013 (photo credit: Channel 2 screen capture)

AP | 15 Aug 2013 :: An explosion ripped through a stronghold of the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah on Thursday in a suburb south of the country’s capital. Thick black smoke could be seen rising over nearby buildings, and eyewitnesses said the blast shook the area.

Lebanese media reported that at least 13 people were killed in the explosion, which took place in the Rweiss district, a Shi’ite region that is one of Hezbollah’s bastions of support. A similar attack took placenearby in early July but did not cause any deaths.

Lebanese officials said the powerful blast was caused by a car bomb, which they estimated was planted by activists opposed to Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria’s ongoing civil war.

An Associated Press photographer saw at least two bodies and many wounded people at the scene. Lebanese TV showed a raging fire and thick black smoke from the blast, which set ablaze several cars. Dozens of ambulances rushed to the scene of the explosion and fire fighters were seen trying to evacuate residents from burning buildings.

Last month, a car bomb exploded in the same south Beirut suburb, wounding more than 50 people, in an attack that what was widely assumed to be the handiwork of Syrian rebels.

In May, two rockets slammed into Hezbollah’s stronghold in south Beirut, wounding four people. The rockets struck hours after the organization’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, vowed in a speech to help propel President Bashar Assad to victory in Syria’s civil war. In June, a rocket slammed into the same area, causing no casualties.(Courtesy:The Times of Israel)

Syrian rebels claim they killed 40 Hezbollah, Iranian fighters.

Syrian rebels claim they killed 40 Hezbollah, Iranian fighters.

Opposition says it detonated a car bomb next to a building packed with foreign pro-Assad forces; no official confirmation

Add capSyrian citizens gather near damaged cars that were
 burned after a car bomb exploded in the suburb of Jaramana,
Damascus, Syria, on Thursday, July 25, 2013
. (photo credit: AP Photo/SANA)tion

12 Aug 2013 :: Syrian rebels claim to have killed at least 40 Hezbollah militants and Iranian agents in Damascus over the weekend.

According to their reports, rebels belonging to the Free Syrian Army detonated a car packed with explosives next to a compound belonging to the government defense apparatus, where the pro-Assad fighters were gathered. Members of the Shabiha, the regime’s civilian-clad enforcement apparatus, were reportedly also at the compound when the blast occurred.

FSA reports indicate the incident took place in the al-Shaghour neighborhood within Damascus’ walled old city, which was once a heavily Jewish area. But according to Al Arabiya, state television broadcast images of the blast, claiming it was a roadside bombing that did not take place in the heart of the city.

There has been no independent verification of the claims.

The attack comes during another bloody weekend in Syria. Opposition activists said Saturday that government warplanes bombed a predominantly Sunni village in northwestern Syria, killing at least 20 people as government forces pushed to retake territory in the region along the Mediterranean coast.

The rebel capture last week of 11 villages in the regime stronghold of Latakia province along the coast was a symbolic blow to Assad, whose troops have otherwise been making gains in central Syria. Assad’s forces are trying to retake those villages, which are predominantly populated by members of Assad’s Alawite sect.(Courtesy:The Times of Israel)