One person was killed and 28 wounded in a bombing in a Christian section of Beirut late Friday, the latest in a string of blasts to hit the Lebanese capital this year, police said. Police identified the dead man as an elderly Lebanese of Armenian origin and said three of the wounded remained in hospital yesterday. The blast struck just before midnight (2100 GMT) in a small side street in the Jeitawi quarter of east Beirut. Investigating magistrate Rashid Mezher said a resident saw two young men place two suitcases between two parked cars before running off. Her son, who ran across the alley to warn customers at a nearby cafe, was wounded in the blast, judicial sources said. The force of the blast, estimated at some 20 kilograms (44 pounds) of TNT equivalent, collapsed the roof of the cafe and damaged the facade of a neighboring office block.It was the 12th bomb attack in Lebanon since the February assassination of ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in a massive car bombing on the Beirut seafront in which 20 other people also died. Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, in New York for the UN General Assembly, said he had no doubt that there was a single hand behind the bombings. âTheyâre trying to divert attention and point the finger elsewhere,â he told Lebanese media, without actually saying who he meant.
| I don't know who in Damascus he might be talking about. But if I was the Leb security forces, I'd be finding those two fellows who left their little package and having a long and painful discussion with them. |