Posts Tagged ‘Blast in Beirut’
Hot Post this week (Nov. 3/2012)
Posted on: November 3, 2012
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- Blast in Beirut: Covered by contributing reporters?
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- What of the victims of city of Fallujah (Iraq) During US occupation? Any serious discussions…?
- Collateral Ordinary victims of assassination blasts: Do not deserve a Lebanese national burial?
- The Void exists, and is mighty powerful: Called Black Force
Blast in Beirut: Covered by an US reporter?
A powerful bomb devastated a Christian neighborhood of this capital city of Lebanon on Friday, killing 8 civilians and the targeted intelligence official Gen. Wissam Al Hassan, and injuring over 110 civilians…
In a nearby upstairs apartment, Lily Nameh, 73, said she had been taking a nap with her husband, Ghaleb. “I thought it was an earthquake,” she said. “Suddenly everything was falling on us.” Her husband said, “It felt like a plane landed on the building.”
I have posted several articles on this car explosion in Achrafieh, in east Beirut, and decided to post a typical coverage from a foreigner who needs to satisfy the idiosyncratic message of the New York Times in order to have the piece published.
You feel as if this reporter is not in the mood of comprehending anything: All that this reporter knows is what the editor likes to see published in the Middle-East and the same versions of the Federal Administration wants to convey to the US citizens about this region… I added numbers of the victims of the blast and content between parenthesis are mine…
ANNE BARNARD published on October 19, 2012 in the NYT:
Within hours of the attack, the Lebanese authorities announced that the dead included the intelligence chief of the country’s internal security service, Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan, instantly spurring accusations that the Syrian government had assassinated him for recently uncovering what the authorities said was a Syrian plot to provoke unrest in Lebanon.
“They wanted to get him, and they got him,” said Paul Salem, a regional analyst with the Carnegie Middle East Center.
But if the attack was targeted, the blast was most certainly not. The force of the explosion left elderly residents fleeing their wrecked homes in bloodied pajamas and spewed charred metal as far as two blocks. Residents rushed to help each other amid the debris, burning car wreckage and a macabre scene of victims in blood-soaked shirts.
It was the first large-scale bombing in the country since 2008 and was the most provocative violence here linked to the Syrian conflict since it began 19 months ago.
The attack struck a heavy blow to a security service that had asserted Lebanon’s fragile sovereignty by claiming to catch Syria red-handed in a plan to destabilize its neighbor, which Syria has long dominated.
It threatened to inflame sectarian tensions by eliminating General Hassan, a Sunni Muslim known for his close ties to fellow Sunni politicians (the Hariri clan of the Mustakbal movement) who support the Syrian uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. General Hassan was viewed by Syrian opposition activists as an ally and protector.
Imad Salamey, a political science professor at Lebanese American University, blamed Mr. Assad’s government and said that the attack seemed intended to show that Syria has the ability to destabilize Lebanon and threaten to embroil the region in chaos.
The Syrian government issued a statement condemning the bombing, quoting the information minister, Omran al-Zoubi, as saying, “These sort of terrorist, cowardly attacks are unjustifiable wherever they occur.”
The attack harked back to the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a longtime foe of Mr. Assad’s, in a car bombing in 2005. Syria was widely blamed, and protests in the aftermath of that killing forced Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon, a major blow to its regional influence.
But a series of bombings targeting politicians, journalists and security officials followed, shaking Lebanon and sending the message that Syria’s power still reached deep into its neighbor.
The size and location of the bomb on Friday awakened a general feeling of dread that the Syrian conflict, which has already depressed Lebanon’s economy and sent thousands of Syrian refugees into the country, was coming home to Lebanese civilians, and could set off tit-for-tat killings and reprisals that could spiral out of control.
The blast seemed to accelerate a pattern already established, as the Syrian civil war increasingly draws in the region, crossing the borders of its many neighbors. Recently, a mortar blast from Syria killed civilians in southern Turkey, prompting the Turkish military to respond with artillery strikes into Syria for several days. Jordan has struggled to absorb as many as 180,000 refugees.
Shells have exploded in the disputed Golan Heights region occupied by Israel. Iran has been accused of sending weapons and advisers into Syria to help Mr. Assad. Saudi Arabia and Turkey have provided weapons and cash to the rebels trying to oust Mr. Assad, and rebels have taken control of border crossings between Syria and Iraq.
In Beirut, there were efforts to tamp down animosities, and keep the peace.
Not far behind the ambulances, politicians arrived at the scene of the blast. They urged Lebanese citizens to resist being drawn into the conflict — but also pointed fingers at Syria and its Lebanese allies in sharp language that seemed as likely to induce anger as to warn against it.
As news spread of the bombing, the streets of Beirut’s largely Christian Ashrafiyeh district were initially calm. People walked dogs and escorted children home from school. But they also gathered in small groups warily discussing the bombing and clutched cellphones to share news.
Outside a damaged grocery stood Sandra Abrass, a filmmaker and former Red Cross worker, frustrated that she was not allowed to help on the scene because her skimpy yellow flats were no protection against broken glass, and said she was in pain first for the wounded and then for Lebanon.
“You don’t feel safe any more,” she said. After growing up during the 1975-1991 civil war, she said, she was no longer used to the idea that bombs could go off at any moment, and feared that there would be more bombings and reprisals.
“They cannot let us live happily,” she said.
General Hassan came to prominence as a security chief for the assassinated former prime minister, Mr. Hariri. Early on, he was a suspect in that killing, but later helped build a circumstantial case, based on phone records, that a team from Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese Shiite organization aligned with Syria, had coordinated the Hariri attack and was at the scene of the murder. Hezbollah, which has since become an important member of Lebanon’s government, claims the records were fabricated.
Another security official, Wissam al-Eid, who helped compile the phone records, was killed in a car bombing in 2008, part of a series of assassinations of political figures, journalists and investigators.
More recently, in August, General Hassan shocked Lebanon by arresting a prominent pro-Syrian politician, Michel Samaha, on charges of importing explosives in a bid to set off bombs and wreak sectarian havoc as part of a Syrian-led plot. It was a surprising move in a country where state institutions have rarely had the power to take on political figures, especially those backed by foreign powers or Lebanese militias.
In a brief interview on Friday, the chief of the Internal Security Forces, Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi, said, “Wissam al-Hassan was targeted because of Samaha’s case.”
The Internal Security Forces have often been seen as allied with Sunni anti-Syrian factions. But Mr. Salem of Carnegie said that General Hassan did not pursue only his friends’ political enemies; he was also credited with disrupting numerous networks of Israeli spies.
Mr. Salem said that General Hassan and his investigators were “one of the bright spots that saw the Syrian influence apparently ebb,” demonstrating that “the Lebanese state was beginning to develop capacities, they could arrest Samaha, they were doing things that a sovereign state does.”
While some anti-Syrian politicians suggested that the bombing was intended to distract from allegations that Hezbollah is fighting on the Syrian government’s side, they stopped short of accusing the party of involvement in the bombing. Several analysts said Hezbollah was unlikely to carry out such an attack, which would threaten its political standing inside Lebanon.
In the bombed neighborhood in Ashrafiyeh district on Friday, Civil Defense officers picked pieces of flesh off a security fence and put them into plastic supermarket bags.
On Friday nights, areas of central Beirut are usually crowded with cars and pedestrians heading out to party. But after the bombing, the usual Friday night traffic jams never materialized, and watering holes that usually send excess crowds on to the sidewalks in neighborhoods known for night life sat quiet and forlorn.
Reporting was contributed by Hwaida Saad, Hania Mourtada and Josh Wood from Beirut, and Christine Hauser and Rick Gladstone from New York.
A version of this article appeared in print on October 20, 2012, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Blast in Beirut Seen as Extension of Syria Conflict.
Related
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The Lede Blog: Video and Images of the Beirut Bombing Aftermath (October 19, 2012)
Collateral Ordinary victims of assassination blasts: Do not deserve a Lebanese national burial?
Posted on: October 27, 2012
Collateral Ordinary victims of assassination blasts: Do not deserve a national burial?
The bombing that killed Lebanon’s internal intelligence chief , Gen. Wissam Al Hassan, also claimed the life of many collateral civilians of 8 and and injured 110.
They found a part of a hand in the street of Ibrahim el-Mounzer today, a side street at Sassine Square in Achrafieh, along with some intestines – no one doubted ownership of the thumb that was discovered, still pressing the button of a mobile phone. But the little people of Lebanon remained forgotten, the bereaved and the wounded, all 38 of them, largely not photographed.
ROBERT FISK reported from on Monday 22 October 2012 in The Independence:
“Gun battles enshrined the streets of central Beirut a day after the nation buried Brigadier-General Wissam al-Hassan. But the bravest man in Lebanon yesterday stood in a church in the tired suburb of Bourj Hammoud: a young Armenian whose equally young wife was slaughtered last Friday.
I suppose we scribes always go for the Big Story – the Lebanese intelligence boss blown to bits in a car-bomb assassination. The clichés are essential, as is the assumption that Syria’s war is “slipping across the border”, but the tragedy of Georgette Sarkissian, a bystander, should be told.
She was a victim whose life was every bit as precious as that of the man who was buried with such pomp and violence in central Beirut at the weekend. And if serving coffee and apples to bank employees in a narrow east Beirut street was less romantic than that of the Lebanese secret policeman, so efficiently liquidated last week, her family story is worthy of a book rather than a newspaper article.
The General and Georgette died, of course, in the same millisecond.
Joseph Sarkissian’s family came from the Mount of Olives in Palestine and his grandparents were thrown out of Armenia during the 1915 Turkish genocide. He stood next to his 21-year old daughter Therese – who was with her mother Georgette when she was killed, and wore a blood-red mascara of spotted wounds on her face that contrasted tragically with her black dress – shaking hands as one must at these awful “condolences”, and spoke with such eloquence of his sorrow.
In Lebanon, the big men get the imperial funerals, the little women are left to be buried.
But the biggest man in Lebanon was Joseph Sarkissian, an insurance official, short dark hair, spectacles, no tears in his eyes. In his own words, in perfect, flawless English he said: “I can’t tell you… She is half my life. My daughter picked her up from the ground – she carried her in her arms because there were no ambulances, and drove her to the hospital in her own car”.
“From the first, my wife was in a coma, thanks to God – because her head was opened from behind by the explosion. Part of her brain was missing. She is a treasure to me. You can’t imagine… There were so many flowers for her and for me – because everyone loves her and everyone loves me.
“In Lebanon, there are too many surprises – every day, there is a new surprise. She was going to buy new shoes the same day. Today was the first day of her vacation. She wanted to rest this week – and now she rests forever.”
Today was a day for such words.
There was the local bank manager in rue Mohamed el-Mounzer who said Lebanon had endured “40 years of crucifixion” and that during the country’s 1975-1990 civil war, “not a pane of glass had been broken in the street”.
There was the old man – like most of the others, a Christian – who uttered a quote-of-the-year in reference to General Hassan. “He was very low profile – everyone knew him,” he said. Too true. General Hassan, a Muslim, thought he had a “safe house” in the street. But there are no “safe houses” in Lebanon, and – being a tiny little country – no “secret” policemen.
At the end of the road, I came across Lebanese ceramics artist Nathalie Khayat, bandages still covering the wounds to her back, who had been talking to her sons Noa and Teo when the bomb shredded Georgette’s life – and those of the general and two of his men – and almost killed her. “The first thing I thought of was the civil war,” she said. “I was looking at my son’s homework. He is nine today. And I was nine when the civil war started in 1975.”
The radios were talking of a gun and grenade battle between supporters of the 14 March alliance – the official opposition to the pro-Syrian government – and the Lebanese army which had come under fire from them during the night.
And Abed, my driver, and I drove as we have so often these past decades to park near the Museum, and I ran down the side street and stood next to the soldiers. And here comes your reporter, clumping into his own story again. On this very spot, beside this very road, next to this very wall, I took cover from bullets 36 years ago.
Note: More details https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/another-car-bombing-in-beirut-immediate-political-finger-pointing-and-scores of injured
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