Circles close to Hezbollah have not ruled out the possibility that a suicide bomber was behind the blast that struck Beirut's southern suburbs Thursday afternoon [Aug. 15]. They maintain the possibility that it was a suicide bomber who blew himself up in a car bomb, the Iraqi way. This augurs in a new phase of heated developments in Lebanon, which some have predicted for a while, based on several indicators.
This latest explosion was the second of its kind in just more than a month. On July 9, a car bomb exploded in a densely populated neighborhood of Beirut's southern suburbs, the majority of whose residents are Shiite. The two incidents, however, differ in the size of the blast and the number of victims. While the first bombing only resulted in a few injuries, the second explosion was very large and resulted in dozens of casualties. There are reports of about 20 dead as of the time of this writing.
