Almost simultaneously on the night of Dec. 15, two army checkpoints along Lebanon’s southern coast became the target of attacks carried out by a group of Lebanese and Palestinian militants affiliated with extremist Islamist organizations. Less than 48 hours later, a car rigged with nearly 80 kilograms of explosives detonated near a Hezbollah base in the town of Sbouba, near the city of Maqna, in the northern Bekaa Valley. Security investigations of these incidents are still under way. 

Preliminary investigations of the two attacks on the checkpoints suggest they are the work of the faction that carried out the Nov. 19 attack against the Iranian Embassy in Beirut using two suicide bombers, one of whom drove a booby-trapped car and one who walked toward his intended target and blew himself up with an explosive belt.

The army checkpoint attacks were another in a series of operations targeting Lebanon since the summer. The attacks noticeably proliferated after Hezbollah decided to participate in the Syrian civil war alongside the Bashar al-Assad regime. This decision opened a security front between the Shiite Party of God and Sunni Salafist extremist factions that assume different names with each operation executed in Lebanon. The common element among their names is that they are all inspired by historical Islamist figures, an indication that they all belong to the same line of Salafist jihadism.

The driving factor in the checkpoint attacks revolves around the three men who carried out the first attack, against the Majdelyoun roadblock. When soldiers manning the roadblock ordered the men to stop their four-wheel drive vehicle, they disembarked, and one of them blew himself up, killing his companions and a soldier. The second attack, which targeted a roadblock nearby, was in response to the first operation. In this instance, a gunman fired at soldiers in retaliation for his group members’ deaths at Majdelyoun. According to preliminary information, the men in the SUV had been on their way to execute an attack elsewhere, but their chance encounter with the roadblock forced the operatives' hand, leading to their deaths at the checkpoint.