BEIRUT: Lebanese authorities have arrested seven Syrians and two Lebanese suspected of involvement in last week’s deadly twin suicide bombings south of Beirut and smuggling extremists into the country, Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk said Sunday.
Machnouk also warned of a scheme to plunge Lebanon into chaos as a consequence of a spillover of the nearly 5-year-old war in Syria into the country.
General Security said Sunday it had arrested a Lebanese man, identified as Ibrahim Ahmad Rayed, and a Syrian, identified as Mustafa Ahmad Jaref, who had funded and planned for the Burj al-Barajneh bombings.
But it was not immediately clear whether the two are among the nine detainees mentioned by Machnouk.
Machnouk said that ISIS, which has claimed responsibility for the two blasts that killed at least 46 people and wounded over 200 in Beirut’s southern suburb of Burj al-Barajneh last Thursday, had initially planned to attack a hospital near the targeted area by sending five suicide bombers instead of two, but changed its mind because of tight security.
“It’s clear that there is a major decision to destabilize Lebanon. Based on the investigation, it turned out that they [attackers] were waiting for five suicide bombers,” Machnouk told a news conference at the ISF headquarters in Beirut.
“What is more horrible is that the Burj al-Barajneh bombings had been planned to take place at the Rassoul al-Aazam Hospital in the same area.
But tight security measures around the hospital forced them to change their target and choose a densely populated area after inspecting the rush hour,” he said.
The hospital, located on the road leading to Beirut airport, is known to treat Hezbollah fighters wounded in Syria, where the party has been directly involved in the country’s war since 2013.
“So far, there are seven Syrians who have been arrested, aside from the two suicide bombers. There are two Lebanese who have been detained, one of them a [would-be] suicide bomber and the other a trafficker who smuggled them across the border from Syria,” Machnouk said.
A unit of the ISF’s Information Branch Sunday raided the house of the alleged trafficker, identified as A.S., suspected of helping in the smuggling of the two suicide bombers from Syria to Lebanon, the National News Agency reported. It said false documents were seized from the house in the northern Bekaa town of Labweh. Security forces also impounded a vehicle suspected of transporting the two terrorists.
Machnouk said that five members of a “terrorist” network had originally planned to blow themselves up in two different locations and not just in the southern Beirut suburb. The five included the two suicide bombers who carried out the Burj al-Barajneh attack, another two members who, he said, were in Syria at the time, and a Lebanese man who was arrested in the northern city of Tripoli’s Qibbeh neighborhood Thursday wearing an explosive belt and planning an attack there.Machnouk’s media office told The Daily Star that the man, identified as Ibrahim Jamal, had planned to carry out a suicide attack in Tripoli’s Jabal Mohsen neighborhood before his arrest.
During his arrest, Jamal attempted to detonate an explosives belt, but a technical fault prevented him from doing so, Machnouk said. He added that Jamal had illegally re-entered the country through the northern Bekaa region.
The interior minister warned of more bombings. “When they [ISIS] plan to send five suicide bombers to one area, this means that it is not the first attack and it will not be the last,” he said.
Machnouk applauded the ISF’s Information Branch, saying it had made an “extraordinary achievement” by arresting the entire terror network behind the Burj al-Barajneh blasts in less than 48 hours. “We will apprehend terrorists wherever they are and wherever they come from, and the Lebanese have proved that there is no safe haven for them in the country.”
The ISF’s Information Branch Saturday announced that it had uncovered the identity of the suicide bombers and arrested another network linked to the attacks. It released photos of the attackers and called on anyone who knew them to come forward and give details.
Some of the detained Syrians, according to Machnouk, had rented out an apartment in Beirut’s Ashrafieh neighborhood where they assembled the explosive belts and were in contact with a man called “Abu Walid” in Syria’s Raqqa province, ISIS’ stronghold. The others, he said, were staying at the Burj al-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp.
Machnouk cited an Army statement as saying that 10 bomb-rigged vehicles and a bigger number of explosives-laden motorcycles had been discovered in the northeastern town of Arsal near the border with Syria. He said residents living in towns and villages near the border with Syria are duty-bound to cooperate with security forces to protect their areas and prevent the flow of terrorists and would-be suicide bombers into the country.
Machnouk called on politicians to come together and look for solutions to the presidential void, adding that Lebanon was not a priority in the international community. “Despite their enthusiasm, seriousness and limited capacity, these security agencies cannot protect the country without political stability, which is the only way to protect the country and achieve security in the country,” he said. “Lebanon is not on the international map, but Yemen and Syria are. We must realize this fact and act accordingly.”
Meanwhile, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah said the Burj al-Barajneh blasts would only increase the party’s determination to fight ISIS in Syria. He also denounced the Paris attacks that ISIS also took credit for, leaving at least 132 people dead.
Referring to the Burj al-Barajneh blasts, Nasrallah said: “If they [ISIS] assume that killing our men and women and children and burning our markets could weaken our determination, then they are mistaken.”
The bombings “will increase our determination … We will go and search to open fronts with ISIS.”