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 )

al-Qaeda fighters at Damascus.

Syria: 12 killed in clashes between Army, al-Qaeda fighters at Damascus.

Beirut | Lebanon | 02 Oct 2013 :: Activists reported heavy clashes between Syrian troops and al-Qaeda-linked fighters in northern Damascus have killed at least 12 soldiers and pro-government militiamen.

International weapons inspectors are in Damascus to begin their complex task of overseeing the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons against the backdrop of the civil war.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Wednesday that the 12 died the day before in the city's Barzeh district.

Clashes in Barzeh flared up on Monday when the army launched a push to dislodge the rebels, including al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra fighters, from the district.

The Observatory says the opposition has been trying to capture the area for months in an attempt to take the battle for the capital closer to President Bashar Assad's seat of power.(Courtesy:The Indian Express)

Iranian diplomat threatens to kidnap Obama’s daughter if U.S. attacks Syria.

Iranian diplomat threatens to kidnap Obama’s daughter if U.S. attacks Syria.

U.S. President Barack Obama with his daughters
Malia and Sasha. (File photo: AFP)

Al Arabiya | 07 sep 2013 :: An Iranian strategic expert has warned that one of the daughters of U.S. President Barack Obama will be kidnapped and raped if America carries out a military strike on Syria, reported the Daily Mail on Friday.

Alireza Forghani, the former governor of the Kish Province in southern Iran, threatened mass murders and abductions on U.S. citizens in the event of an American-led attack on Syria.

“Hopefully Obama will be pigheaded enough to attack Syria, and then we will see the … loss of U.S. interests [through terrorist attacks],” the website reported him as saying.

“In just 21 hours [after the attack on Syria], a family member of every U.S. minister [department secretary], U.S. ambassadors, U.S. military commanders around the world will be abducted. And then 18 hours later, videos of their amputation will be spread [around the world].”

According to media reports on Friday, the United States intercepted an order from an Iranian official instructing militants in Iraq to attack U.S. interests in Baghdad if the attack goes ahead.

The State Department issued a warning on Thursday telling U.S. citizens to avoid all but essential travel to Iraq.

The United States has been preparing for a military strike on Syria, evacuating non-essential embassy staff from Beirut. It has also warned Americans to avoid all travel to Lebanon and southern Turkey.

Obama is still awaiting the Congress’ authorization for military action. The lawmakers will reconvene on Monday and the president will address the nation on Tuesday.(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)

Fears Growing as Syrians Wait for U.S. Attack.

Fears Growing as Syrians Wait for U.S. Attack.

BEIRUT | Lebanon  | 30 Aug 2013 ::  In a narrow alley in the old city of Damascus, a shopkeeper who opposes the Syrian government spent Thursday as usual, drinking coffee with the other merchants who keep him company in place of long-vanished tourists. But the calm on the cobblestone street, he said, could hardly mask the fear and ambivalence over an American military strike.

“Disorder, revenge. Sectarian violence,” he said in a text message, ticking off what he sees as the worst potential consequences of the missile strikes that American officials have threatened against President Bashar al-Assad’s government, which they blame for a deadly chemical attack last week.

In Damascus, as people stock up on food and water and the government closes central streets and moves troops and matériel into residential areas and schools, even staunch supporters of the uprising against Mr. Assad are divided on the looming attack.

Many here feel even a limited strike threatens to inject a new, unpredictable dynamic into a civil war that has largely spared their storied city. And some opponents of the government are loath to see direct American military intervention in their fight, fearful it will hijack and discredit the uprising they have waged for more than two years at great cost.

Though some called early on for NATO intervention, others said they wanted support and arms from Washington — not an attack by the American military.(Copy from:The New York Times)

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)

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)