A powerful bomb went off in a Christian neighborhood of eastern Beirut late Friday, wounding at least three people and sending soldiers scrambling to the scene. The blast detonated just before midnight near a bank, completely destroying a car. But it was not clear if the bomb was placed in the vehicle, under it or near it. Two other cars were also damaged.At least no one appears to have been killed.
The explosion was the latest in a series of blasts that have shaken Beirut, some killing or wounding prominent politicians and others hitting public areas and causing panic. It came days after a U.N. investigator visited Damascus to set up interviews with top Syrian officials over the most notorious of the bomb blasts — a Feb. 14 explosion that killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 20 other people. The U.N. team has already accused four senior Lebanese security officials who carried out Syrian policy in the country. Many in
Maybe I'm not Byzantine enough, but I can't for the life of me figure the reasoning, if any, behind these car booms. At first they made a bit of convoluted sense, in that they "demonstrated" that Leb's an unstable mix and that best for all concerned would be if Syria returned and maintained order. There have been periodic booms ever since the end of the civil war and I'm assuming most of those were orchestrated by Syria or her domestic allies for internal political reasons, as appears to have been the case with Hariri. A few — not as many as were attributed — were probably the Mossad's work. But Syria's been under intensifying scrutiny since the Hariri killing, which I believe to have been miscalculated "business as usual" on the part of the Syrian intel guys. This latest two or three booms accomplishes nothing but making things worse for Syria. That might mean they're done by the Mossad, which obviously has an interest in destabilizing Syria, but the risks with competent investigators like Mehlis in the neighborhood outweigh the minimal gains, since Syria's destabilizing nicely on its own. Should one of the latest series of explosions be hung on Israel, by inference they all will and the Leb independence movement will be discredited. To me, that leaves the Islamists, probably first cousins to the Dinnieh group and Jund al-Shams. But arguing against them is the fact that none of the post-Hariri booms have been hung on anyone. And Islamists have the habit of not only claiming credit for their depredations, but also claiming credit for other people's. So I'll remain confused, at least until something breaks... |