9 People, Including 1 American, Injured in Brummana Bombing
Police said Saturday nine people, including one American, were injured and hospitalized from a bomb that ripped a parking lot of a commercial center in Lebanon's summer resort town of Brummana the previous night.
Most of the injuries were caused by flaying glass and smoke from the explosion of a 25-kilogram explosive charge that targeted the Rizk Plaza, a complex of living apartments with shops and a branch of slain ex-Premier Hariri's Bank Mediterrane at the lower floors, a police statement said.
The blast also wrecked dozens of private cars inside and near the targeted parking lot. Many were set afire but subsequent heavy rains put down the blaze before fire engines could make to Brummana, a favorite of Gulf summer vacationers a 30-minute drive from Beirut into the Metn Mountains.
Many other tenants were treated on the spot for shock and respiratory difficulties as civil defense volunteers climbed on make-shift steel ladders to bring victims out of the higher floors. They were put on stretchers with oxygen masks.
Opposition leaders, who raced to inspect the blast scene, openly blamed the bombing on Syria's intelligence service and affiliated security departments in Lebanon, which are out to show that Syria's withdrawal would leave Lebanon in chaotic instability.
This was the fourth such bombing since the Syrians began to pullout their army and intelligence personnel from Lebanon hard on the heels of ex-Premier Hariri's assassination Feb. 14.
All four bombings hit targets in Lebanon's Christian heartland, a concept seen by the opposition as designed by Syria to fan the flames of a new civil war and show that Lebanon still cannot afford the security backlash of the withdrawal of the service and affiliated security departments of President Lahoud's Syrian-sponsored regime.
Most of the injuries were caused by flaying glass and smoke from the explosion of a 25-kilogram explosive charge that targeted the Rizk Plaza, a complex of living apartments with shops and a branch of slain ex-Premier Hariri's Bank Mediterrane at the lower floors, a police statement said.
The blast also wrecked dozens of private cars inside and near the targeted parking lot. Many were set afire but subsequent heavy rains put down the blaze before fire engines could make to Brummana, a favorite of Gulf summer vacationers a 30-minute drive from Beirut into the Metn Mountains.
Many other tenants were treated on the spot for shock and respiratory difficulties as civil defense volunteers climbed on make-shift steel ladders to bring victims out of the higher floors. They were put on stretchers with oxygen masks.
Opposition leaders, who raced to inspect the blast scene, openly blamed the bombing on Syria's intelligence service and affiliated security departments in Lebanon, which are out to show that Syria's withdrawal would leave Lebanon in chaotic instability.
This was the fourth such bombing since the Syrians began to pullout their army and intelligence personnel from Lebanon hard on the heels of ex-Premier Hariri's assassination Feb. 14.
All four bombings hit targets in Lebanon's Christian heartland, a concept seen by the opposition as designed by Syria to fan the flames of a new civil war and show that Lebanon still cannot afford the security backlash of the withdrawal of the service and affiliated security departments of President Lahoud's Syrian-sponsored regime.
source: Naharnet
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