France, UAE Interior Ministers Say Ready to Help Lebanon after Dahieh Attack

France and the United Arab Emirates expressed readiness Friday to boost security cooperation with Lebanon, a day after a twin suicide bombing killed 44 people and wounded 239 others in the Beirut southern suburb of Bourj al-Barajneh.

In a phone call with Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq, UAE Interior Minister Sheikh Seif bin Zayed al-Nahyan expressed his country's “solidarity with the Lebanese government and people,” the National News Agency said.

He also voiced the UAE's readiness to “offer every assistance in the field of exchanging intel with (Lebanese) security agencies, if that can contribute to helping the investigation into the crime that was committed yesterday by terrorists in the Bourj al-Barajneh region.”

Earlier in the day, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve sent a cable to Mashnouq, expressing “full readiness to explore means to strengthen security cooperation between France and Lebanon.”

France “stands by the Lebanese authorities and Lebanese people in their fight against terrorism,” he said.

Both France and the UAE are members of the U.S.-led coalition that is carrying out an air campaign against the extremist Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.

Two IS suicide bombers blew themselves up Thursday in a busy street in the Beirut southern suburb of Bourj al-Barajneh, killing 44 people and wounding 239 others, in the bloodiest such attack in years.

The blast is the first to target Beirut's southern suburbs since June 2014.

But prior to that, a string of attacks targeted Hizbullah strongholds throughout the country.

Between July 2013 and February 2014, there were nine attacks on Hizbullah bastions, most claimed by jihadist extremists.

The groups claimed the attacks were in revenge for Hizbullah's decision to send thousands of fighters into neighboring Syria to support President Bashar Assad's forces against an Islamist-dominated uprising.

Y.R.