DUSHANBE, November 13, 2015, Asia-Plus – International media outlets report that a pair of suicide bombings struck southern Beirut on Thursday, killing 43 people.
According to Lebanese state-run
National News Agency
, at least 239 others were wounded, according to state-run National News Agency.
CNN
quoted a Lebanese security source a saying that a would-be suicide bomber who survived the attack told investigators he was an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) recruit. The man, a Lebanese national from Tripoli, Lebanon, was taken into custody after the blasts. He reportedly told authorities that he and three other attackers arrived in Lebanon from Syria two days ago.
Lebanese intelligence believes the bombers could be part of a cell dispatched to Beirut by ISIL leadership, the source said, but investigators are still working to verify the surviving suspect”s claim. The three other bombers were killed in the explosions.
In a purported ISIL statement circulated on social media, the terror group claimed responsibility for the blasts.
CNN
hasn”t confirmed the authenticity of the statement.
The explosions detonated within 150 meters and five minutes of each other, Lebanese state-run
National News Agency
said, shaking an open-air market and other parts of the Bourj al-Barajneh district in southern Beirut.
“There”s a lot of shattered glass on the street, a lot of blood, and it”s really just a scene of chaos and carnage,” journalist Tamara Qiblawi told
CNN
shortly after the blasts.
