Hours before the parliament convened to vote on the electoral law on Monday, an explosion occurred in al-Bahsas in Tripoli. Reports suggest the explosion targeted a military bus carrying at least 20 soldiers, leaving at least five dead and 21 injured.
The Voice of Lebanon radio station reported that a Renault 18 sedan, which was positioned near the bus, blew up. The bus’ license plate number was 501516.
Tripoli has been a hotbed of strife since the May incidents, as there were ongoing battles between the Sunni Bab al-Tabbaneh neighborhood and Alawi parties in Jabal Mohsen.
The army has also been targeted in the northern city following its 15-week battle with Fatah al-Islam militants in the northern Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared in the summer of 2007. Fatah al-Islam was badly beaten during the fighting, but it did not disband, and its members are thought to be behind the August 13 explosion in Tripoli near a bus filled with soldiers that left 14 people dead, nine of whom soldiers, and scores injured.
The Tripoli Memorandum was signed on September 8 under the auspices of PM Fouad Siniora between the Future Movement and Tripoli parties to give the army and ISF full authority in the city and to also provide financial assistance in the form of economic development packages and compensation to residents who fled the violence or whose homes were destroyed.
Monday’s Tripoli blast also follows Saturday’s explosion in Damascus that left 17 people, all civilians, dead. The 200-kilogram bomb, the largest in the Syrian capital since the 1980s, went off near a security station and a Shia shrine on the road to the international airport.
Former PM Najib Mikati, who is from Tripoli, told LBC on Monday morning that the explosion was “a terrorist and criminal act against the army, who has been targeted since the Nahr al-Bared events.”
He added that the August 13 bus bombing in the northern city and Monday’s were related, but that “What is taking place has no relation with the reconciliation that occurred in Tripoli nor with other reconciliations.”
Marwan Hamadeh told LBC that the reconciliations in Tripoli did not remove weapons from the streets and did not stop explosions, “which were not planned in Lebanon, but which come from the outside.”
Interior Minister Ziad Baroud called for an exceptional meeting of the Central Security Council for Monday afternoon, and Police Brigadier General Antoine Shakur visited the site of the explosion in Tripoli.
The blast came hours before the Lebanese parliament was set to convene to vote on the national electoral law, a contentious issue. The parliament met on Saturday in a two-part session and decreed that the national voting age would remain 21, that municipality heads could run in parliamentary elections six months after they resign, that the 2009 parliamentary elections would be held in one day, and that soldiers would not be allowed to vote.
-NOW Staff