“The blast erupted in a parking lot near the Islamic Cooperation Centre.” And so the world got a vivid example of Islamic cooperation.
Sunni-Shi’ite Jihad Update: “Car bomb rips through southern Beirut neighborhood,” by Ed Payne and Nada Husseini for CNN, July 10 (thanks to Suneil):
Beirut, Lebanon (CNN) — A car bomb rocked a stronghold of the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah on Tuesday morning, injuring dozens of people in a southern suburb of the capital.
Fifty-three people were hurt in the blast in the Bir El Abed neighborhood, Lebanese Health Minister Ali Hassan Khalil told Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV. Thirteen of them remained hospitalized Tuesday afternoon in stable condition, he said.
The blast erupted in a parking lot near the Islamic Cooperation Centre, a supermarket, the National News Agency reported. Video from the scene broadcast on Al-Manar showed vehicles ablaze, black smoke billowing aloft.
Fire crews doused the flames as authorities kept the crowds back. The explosion affected the lower floors of surrounding buildings, blowing out windows and damaging balconies, NNA reported.
Witnesses said that crowds hurled bottles at the interior minister, Marwan Charbel, as he was touring the site, and he fled.
Many of the injuries were minor, caused by glass debris, said Ali Krayyem, director general of Bahman Hospital, where many of the wounded were taken.
Tensions have risen in recent months as thousands of fighters from the militant Shiite group Hezbollah have poured across the border into Syria and thousands of Syrian refugees have fled into Lebanon….