BEIRUT: Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah yesterday accused radical Sunni Islamists of being behind a car bomb that killed 24 people in Beirut and vowed that the attack would redouble his group’s commitment to its military campaign in Syria.
In a fiery speech to supporters, one day after the deadliest bombing in the capital since Lebanon’s civil war ended two decades ago, Nasrallah raised the stakes by pledging to join the battle in Syria himself if needed.
Thursday’s blast in the Shia militant Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold followed months of sectarian tension and violence in Lebanon fuelled in part by Hezbollah’s intervention against Sunni Muslim rebels in Syria’s civil war.
“It is most likely that a takfiri group was responsible for yesterday’s explosion,” Nasrallah said, referring to radical Sunni Muslim factions linked to Al Qaeda, many of whom are fighting with Syrian rebels against President Bashar Al Assad.
“If you think by killing our women and children ... and destroying our neighbourhoods, we would retreat from the position we took (in Syria) you are wrong,” he said in a combative speech broadcast by videolink from a secret location to his supporters.
“If we had 100 fighters in Syria, now they will be 200. If we had 1,000, they will be 2,000. If we had 5,000 they will be 10,000. If the battle with these takfiri terrorists requires that I and all Hezbollah should go to Syria, we will go.”
Thursday’s explosion engulfed a busy street in flames, reviving memories of the destruction inflicted by Lebanon’s civil war.
Interior Minister Marwan Charbel said investigators were checking CCTV footage taken in the moments before the explosion to see whether the van believed to have carried the bomb had been driven by a suicide bomber or detonated remotely.
Reporters who arrived at the scene minutes after the explosion saw a burnt-out car near the centre of the road, suggesting it was being driven when it blew up.
REUTERS
