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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Lebanon security chief escapes suicide attack |
| 2014-06-21 |
| A suicide bomber killed one person and wounded 37 in an attack at a security checkpoint in Lebanon on Friday that narrowly missed a top security official who said he had been told militants wanted to assassinate him. The explosion occurred in the country's Bekaa Valley near the Syrian border, an area where Lebanese militants opposed to Syrian President Bashar Al Assad have been targeting his key Lebanese ally, the Hezbollah movement. The security official, Major General Abbas Ibrahim, said he passed through the checkpoint on the main highway between Beirut and Damascus minutes before the bomber blew himself up, just 200 metres away from his convoy. "We miraculously escaped," Ibrahim said, adding that many officials in Lebanon were being targeted by the reactivation of "terrorist sleeper cells". "But the security services are ready and on alert to stop them and we won't become another Iraq," he said. Ibrahim, who heads Lebanon's Directorate of General Security (DGS), said security officials had information that militants were aiming to assassinate him. "We were suspicious of the (bomber's) car when we were on our way and when the car stopped at the Dahr Al Baydar checkpoint, the explosion went off," he said. The dead man was a police officer at the checkpoint. The wounded were mainly police, as well as civilians, in the area. On Friday security forces closed a number of roads in Beirut and Tripoli in anticipation of a security risk. "Since this morning we have had strict security measures in Beirut and all areas because we had particular information," the head of Lebanon's internal security forces, Major General Ibrahim Basbous, said on Lebanese television. |
| Posted by:Steve White |