At Least 12 Hurt in Suicide Bombing near Army Checkpoint, Cafe in Tayyouneh
A suicide car bombing took place around midnight Tuesday in the Tayyouneh area at the entrance to Beirut's southern suburbs, leaving at least 12 people wounded.
The explosion happened near an army checkpoint and a cafe where football fans were watching the World Cup.
The Lebanese Red Cross said "no one was killed in the bombing, which caused light injuries among the customers at the Abou Assaf Cafe."
Quoting medical sources, al-Jadeed TV said 12 people were injured, most of them lightly.
State-run National News Agency also said that twelve people were lightly wounded.
Military sources told LBCI television that no soldiers were hurt in the attack.
MTV said a "female suicide bomber" wanted to cross the checkpoint but blew up the vehicle "when troops detected her suspicious behavior."
Meanwhile, media reports said "General Security members opened fire at the car before it blew up."
A witness told a TV station that he saw a white Mercedes car traveling fast on the wrong side of the road before exploding.
NNA said "a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a Mercedes 180 carrying a license plate with the number 144631."
"The force of the blast ejected the terrorist's corpse to the wall of the fourth floor of a building at the site of the explosion," the agency added.
The car bombing came three days after a suicide attack at the Dahr al-Baydar checkpoint in the east of the country left one person dead and 30 wounded. The attack was the first inside Lebanon since March.
On the same day, the busy Hamra district in Beirut was the scene of a major security crackdown, with security forces raiding two hotels in the area and interrogating around 102 people.
Around three suspects remain in custody, including a French national with Arab origins who reportedly confessed to plotting a terrorist attack against a certain Lebanese region.
Y.R.
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