Around 6 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 15, a car bomb rocked the Ruwais area in Beirut’s southern suburbs about 200 meters [220 yards] from the Sayyed al-Shuhada’ complex, where most of Hezbollah’s political and religious celebrations are held. Although a Syrian Sunni opposition fundamentalist group claimed responsibility for the attack, Lebanese sources told Al-Monitor that they don’t rule out the involvement of Israeli intelligence in the bombing.

About a week ago, a source close to Hezbollah told Al-Monitor that the person accused of carrying out the Majdal Anjar-Masnaa explosion in the Bekaa Valley on July 16 admitted during interrogation that he had outfitted bombs on a number of cars that were intended to be detonated in pro-Hezbollah areas, but that he doesn’t know who received those cars or where they are now.

Since that date, the residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs have witnessed extraordinary security measures by Hezbollah’s security apparatus, checking the identities of some motorists in the evenings and searching some cars at night using sniffer dogs and sophisticated equipment to detect explosives. But these measures didn’t prevent Thursday’s car bombing.

The blast didn’t come as a surprise. Residents of the area were expecting it at any time, any place, while Hezbollah has been trying to prevent it through its security precautions. The blast killed about 20 and wounded 226 civilians. That confirmed preliminary estimates by experts that the act was the work of professionals, not amateurs. Some said that the attack was a suicide bombing, but the Lebanese army only confirmed that it was a car bomb. The bomb was estimated at 80 kilos [175 pounds].