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kurdroj-bairut
A bomb exploded in a predominantly Christian
neighborhood of Beirut, Lebanon, on May 20,
killing at least one person and wounding a
dozen. Though the blast occurred shortly
before midnight on a Sunday, the bomb was
placed in the parking lot of a shopping mall
whose restaurants and movie theaters are
still crowded at that hour -- meaning the
bomb was meant to cause many more casualties
that it did. The attack was likely carried
out by the al Qaeda-inspired Fatah al-Islam,
a Syrian-backed militant group that has been
fighting the Lebanese army in the country's
north.
The bomb, packed with approximately 22
pounds of explosives, was placed under or
inside a parked car in the lot across the
street from the southern entrance of the ABC
shopping mall in east-central Beirut's
upper-middle-class Ashrafieh neighborhood.
The powerful blast destroyed dozens of cars,
blew out windows and damaged nearby
buildings, leaving a crater 4 feet deep and
9 feet across. A woman reportedly died when
a wall of her apartment collapsed on her.
Security measures at the mall -- including
surveillance cameras and security guards who
search the purses and backpacks of people
entering the building -- would have made a
direct attack against the mall difficult.
However, the parking lot on the mall's south
side does not have video surveillance, a
vulnerability the bombers would have noticed
during pre-operational surveillance, likely
carried out with a better-planned attack in
mind.
Assuming the bomb was meant to cause mass
casualties, it was quite unsuccessful. This
is perhaps because the attack was hastily
thrown together at the last minute in
response to the recent fighting between the
Lebanese army and Fatah al-Islam, which
included the shelling of the Nahr al-Bared
Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli in
northern Lebanon. The mall's high security
prevented the bombers from getting as close
to it as they would have liked, and they
likely lacked the time to find a vulnerable
spot that would have allowed them better
access to the building.
Using bombs to send political messages is
not uncommon in politically stormy Beirut.
Bombings of this nature usually are either
targeted political assassinations, such as
the killing of former Lebanese Prime
Minister Rafik al-Hariri, or the devices are
meant to detonate at a place and time when
few people are around -- an effort to
prevent a single bombing from igniting
all-out factional war in the city.
Syrian intelligence has a history of staging
bombings in and around the capital in order
to intimidate various Lebanese factions. The
Syrians are believed to be behind a string
of bombings in March 2005 that included an
attack against a shopping mall in the
Christian town of Kaslik near the Lebanese
port city of Jounieh, and a car bombing
three days earlier in the Beirut Christian
suburb of New Jdeideh. Ashrafieh itself has
been the scene of three other bombings since
2005.
Unlike most bombings in Beirut, this latest
attack was clearly meant to kill a large
number of people. Fatah al-Islam, which is
supported by Syrian intelligence, also
carried out the Feb. 13 bombing of two
minibuses at a bus stop in the Ain Alaq
suburb some 12 miles northeast of Beirut.
Those blasts, which were specifically
designed to take lives, killed three people
and wounded at least 18, mostly members of
the Greek Orthodox Church.
The Ashrafieh bombing, which likely will be
traced back to Fatah al-Islam, increases the
stakes in Lebanon's
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