Blasts target Iranian embassy in Beirut, killing 23 | Reuters

Twin Beirut bombing kills at least 10 | Al Akhbar English
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/twin-bombing-kills-several-beiruts-southern-suburbs

The explosions comes about three months after a series of car bombs targeted residential neighborhoods in the southern suburbs of Beirut’s, widely blamed of Salafi extremist with ties to Syria’s al-Qaeda-linked rebels.

The most deadly of them killed 27 in Dahiye’s Roueiss neighborhood on August 15.

A week later nearly 50 people were killed when two car bombs exploded outside mosques in Lebanon’s northern city of Tripoli on August 23.

Hundreds of Lebanese security forces have been manning dozens of checkpoints at the entrances of, and inside, Dahiyeh since the summer attacks in a bid to fend off future attacks.

Bir Hassan is located just outside Dahiyeh.

Updated 11:50 am: Two suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the Iranian embassy in Beirut’s southern suburbs Tuesday morning, killing at least 23 people and wounding over 100, private television and state news reported.

Al Mayadeen TV said that security cameras show the first suicide bomber charged the embassy on a motorcycle and blew himself up to clear the way for a second bomber, who detonated a car packed with explosives.

Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon Ghazanfar Roknabadi told the Beirut-based station that no one was killed inside the embassy, located in the densely populated neighborhood of Bir Hassan, and that all the victims appeared to be civilians.

Health Minister Ali Hassan Khalil put the casualty figures at 23 dead and 146 injured.

▻http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/19/us-lebanon-blast-idUSBRE9AI08G20131119

In a Twitter post, Sheikh Sirajeddine Zuraiqat, the religious guide of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, said the group had carried out the attack. “It was a double martyrdom operation by two of the Sunni heroes of Lebanon,” he wrote.