Report: Bir Hassan Attack Suspect Being Interrogated to Uncover Details of the Crime
A suspect linked to Tuesday's Bir Hassan bombing at the Iranian embassy in Beirut has been arrested, reported An Nahar daily on Friday.
It said that investigations are underway with him in order to reveal all details of the attack and the identity of the suicide bombers.
The existence of the suspect was uncovered after the discovery of telephone calls that he made soon after the blasts.
The daily added that the investigations are on the verge of uncovering the identity of one of the bombers, seeing as images of him were captured by surveillance cameras at the scene of the crime.
Investigators are facing difficulties however in identifying the second attacker, who was driving the explosives-laden car, because he was not caught on any of the cameras.
Meanwhile, a security source told As Safir newspaper Friday that investigators are almost certain that the suicide bombers are not Lebanese.
Some leads have said that they may have arrived to Lebanon from Jordan, but that does not necessarily mean they are Jordanian.
Investigations are currently focusing on how they entered Lebanon, whether by land or plane.
OTV aired on Thursday evening the fake identity cards used by the suicide attackers behind the blasts in Bir Hassan as security forces embarked on searching the hotel where they stayed on their last night.
Also on Thursday, State Commissioner to the Military Court Judge Saqr Saqr ordered the army intelligence to inspect the Sheraton Four Seasons Hotel in the Beirut neighborhood of Verdun, as reports said it was where the attackers spent their last night before their deadly operation.
The security source told As Safir that the attackers left their hotel room 70 minutes before carrying out the bombing.
They likely left their rooms to obtain the vehicle used in the attack, but the investigations have not yet pinpointed the location from where they received their car.
Other security sources said that the assailants arrived at their hotel three days prior to the attack.
On they day of the bombing, they headed to the Tallet al-Khayyat area near Verdun, but the details of their actions in that neighborhood have yet to be uncovered.
Investigations are not ruling out the possibility that they may have received the vehicle used in the attack.
They then left the area and headed towards Bir Hassan to carry out the attack.
Investigations are also focusing on the sides that may have aided the assailants in preparing the attack, starting from how they arrived to Lebanon, booked their hotel room, and obtained the explosives-laden car.
As Safir said that the car was rented by a local company before being stolen and taken to the Bekaa.
It was then taken to a region between the northern Bekaa and Syria's al-Qalamoun region.
At least 23 people were killed and more than 145 others were wounded in twin blasts that took place on Tuesday morning near the Iranian Embassy in the neighborhood of Bir Hassan in Beirut's southern suburbs.
A security official said the first suicide attacker was on a motorcycle that carried two kilograms of explosives. He blew himself up at the large black main gate of the Iranian mission, damaging the three-story facility.
Less than two minutes later, the second suicide attacker driving a car rigged with 50 kilograms of explosives struck about 10 meters away, the official said.
The al-Qaida-linked Abdullah Azzam Brigades claimed responsibility for the bombings, according to the Twitter page of a cleric linked to the group.
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