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Lebanese security forces inspect the site of a suicide attack which targeted an army checkpoint on Friday, on the main highway from Beirut to Damascus in the Dahr al-Baidar area.

BEIRUT: A suicide bomber killed at least two people at a Lebanese checkpoint on the main highway from Beirut to Damascus on Friday, official media and a security source said.

The attack came as members of the security forces raided two hotels in central Beirut and detained at least 15 people, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.

It was unclear whether the arrests were linked with the blast.

“Two people were killed and several others wounded in the Dahr Al-Baydar bomb attack” east of Beirut, the official National News Agency (NNA) reported.
A security source told AFP that the attack was a suicide bombing.

“A suicide car bomb attack hit a checkpoint of the Internal Security Forces (ISF),” he said.

The NNA said the convoy of the chief of Lebanon’s General Security agency, General Abbas Ibrahim, had crossed the checkpoint shortly before the blast.

Ibrahim also said the attack is linked to an offensive spearheaded by jihadis in Iraq.
“I was on the road to the (eastern province of) Bekaa, and the explosion happened when I was just 200 meters away,” Ibrahim told private television station LBC by telephone.

He said he was unharmed but refused to say whether he thought he was the target of the attack.

“The whole of Lebanon is a target,” Ibrahim said, adding he “constantly” receives threats, and those he has received recently have been particularly “worrying.”

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