At Least 4 Killed as Bomber Strikes in Beirut

JAN. 21, 2014

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Firefighters worked to extinguish a blaze at the site of an explosion in southern Beirut early Tuesday. 

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An injured woman was carried away on a stretcher after a bombing in southern Beirut early Tuesday.

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Firefighters and emergency responders after a suicide bombing in a Beirut neighborhood where Hezbollah holds sway. s

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BEIRUT, Lebanon — A suicide bomber blew himself up early Tuesday in a neighborhood in south Beirut where the Shiite militia and political party Hezbollah holds sway, the most recent in a series of such attacks that have targeted civilian areas across Lebanon in recent months.

Lebanon’s National News Agency said the attack killed four people and wounded 27 others. The attack in the Haret Hreik district took place near where a car bomb struck earlier this month, killing five people.

Although no one has claimed responsibility for most of the recent bombings and government investigations have been inconclusive, many analysts suspect that they are intended as retaliation for the role groups in Lebanon are playing in the civil war in neighboring Syria.

Many of the bombings, including one last week in the town of Hermel, have targeted areas mostly populated by Shiites, who strongly support Hezbollah, which has sent fighters to support President Bashar al-Assad of Syria against rebels seeking to topple him. Many of Lebanon’s Sunnis sympathize with the mostly Sunni rebels, and some have gone to join the fight in Syria.