Members of an Al-Qaeda-linked Palestinian splinter group have admitted carrying out last month's deadly Lebanon bus bombings, a government official told AFP Tuesday. Six members of the group are in custody, some of them nationals of once-dominant neighbour Syria, ...
 | ... Syrian citizens are members of al-Qaeda? Is that possible? And booming a bus in Beirut. You'd almost think the Syrians and al-Q were working together or something ... |
... and all have confessed to their part in the February 13 bombings which killed three people and wounded 18 in a mountainous Christian area northeast of Beirut, the official said. Another two members of the cell of the Fatah-Islam group are still at large, the official added, asking not to be identified. It was the first time a Lebanese official had spoken of the arrest of suspects in the bombings.
| It's the first arrests I've heard of connected to the booming campaign... |
The detained suspects confessed to carrying out the bombings from a rented flat in the Ashrafiyeh area of Christian east Beirut. The rental was made in the name of Syrian Mustafa Shiyo, the official said. The suspects said they had also been plotting to carry out attacks against the UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, he added.
| Just to see how quickly the Frogs and Eye-ties would pick up and run ... |
Palestinian officials in Lebanon's refugee camps have expressed mounting concern about Fatah-Islam in recent months. In December, the Lebanon chief of the mainstream Fatah movement of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said the group had sent 150 Arab fighters from Iraq into Lebanon. The militants were able to enter Lebanon without the knowledge of neighboring Syrian authorities, who have since arrested another Palestinian leader on suspicion of organizing their movements, Sultan Abul Aynain said. Abul Aynain described Fatah-Islam as a "fundamentalist movement with an ideology close to Al-Qaeda's and which is financed by (Al-Qaeda chief Osama) bin Laden."
| I'd guess this is connected to the guy they arrested earlier with the bomb. Rather than dealing directly with the Qaeda-flavored bad guyz, the Syrians would deal with PFLP-GC, who as "Paleostinians" would provide the plausible deniability as they dealt merrily with their "countrymen" of Fatah-Islam. This is not sublte to anyone but an Arab. |
A senior PLO official told AFP on November 29 that around 200 Arab militants had arrived recently in Lebanon and set up an Islamic grouping in a Palestinian refugee camp in the north. "About 200 armed elements came to Lebanon over several phases," said Khaled Aref, of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon.
The Al-Mustaqbal daily, owned by the family of slain anti-Syrian former premier Rafiq Hariri said at the time that the 200 militants "are part of a terrorist plot by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad aiming to assassinate 36 (anti-Syrian) Lebanese figures." Hariri was one of six critics of Damascus killed in Lebanon over the past two years in attacks blamed by many on the Syrian regime. Damascus denies links to the attacks. |