53 Lebanese Injured in Dahiyeh Explosion

Local Editor

53 Lebanese citizens were injured in a car bomb Tuesday morning, in a parking lot in the Southern Beirut Suburb, Dahyeh.

The car bomb went off in the parking lot near the Islamic Cooperation Center in the Bir al-Abed area of Dahiyeh.

Also, numerous cars blazed at the scene, and ambulances rushed to the place to transport the injured to Bahman hospital in Haret Hreik.
The Haret Hreik Mayor condemned the act, dubbing it terrorist.

"This terrorist act aims at weakening stability and security to this area and its people.

Hizbullah MP Ali Ammar said Bir al-Abed had been targeted because it "embraces the resistance," adding that the attack "clearly bears the fingerprint of the "Israeli" enemy and its tools."

For his part, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said the explosion that ripped through a Hizbullah-controlled Beirut suburb was aimed at causing massive amounts of death and destruction.

"The criminal terrorist bombing which targeted the southern suburbs today was designed to inflict a lot of death and destruction," Berri said in a statement.

He said it was "divine intervention that prevented a massacre in this densely-populated area, in front of a crowded commercial place," about Tuesday's explosion outside a market in the Beirut suburb of Bir al-Abed that injured dozens.

Berri said the blast also aimed at sowing discord among the Lebanese "which makes awareness a necessity."

The explosive, weighing some 35 kilograms, caused severe material damage in an around the parking lot, where plumes of thick smoke billowed into the sky.