At least three are dead from the bus bomb blasts today near the Christian mountain town of Bikfaya, the ancestral home of the Gemayel family, a prominent political Christian family in Lebanon.
Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel was assassinated last November.
BBC has video here.
A general view shows one of two damaged buses following two bomb blasts in the Christian mountain town of Bikfaya north of Beirut February 13, 2007. Three people were killed and about 20 wounded in two bomb blasts that hit minibuses near Bikfaya town on Tuesday. Security sources had earlier put the death toll at 11. A police spokesman said the report of three deaths was preliminary and the toll could rise. (REUTERS/ Wadih Shlink)
In what appears to be a well organized attack, two bus bombs went off near Beirut today killing three people.
BBC reports:
Two bombs have exploded minutes apart near the Lebanese capital, killing three people and wounding 20 others.
The casualties were travelling on two buses near Bikfaya, a mainly Christian town in the hills north of Beirut.
Initial reports said 12 people had died. Investigators sealed off the area to collect evidence from the wrecks.
The bombings come at a time of acute political tension in Lebanon, and a day before the second anniversary of the killing of former PM Rafik Hariri.
Organisers of a mass rally planned in downtown Beirut on Wednesday to mark the Hariri assassination said there were no plans to cancel it.
Lebanese radio said the buses were passing through the village of Ain Alaq, just south of Bikfaya.
The BBC’s Jim Muir in Beirut says this clearly well-planned attack, involving considerable organisation, will reinforce fears of many Lebanese that hidden hands are at work trying to stir up civil strife.
Ya Libnan was just reporting that many fear the sectarian tensions could spill over into civil war in the streets of Lebanon two years after the assassination of Hariri.
Map of Lebanon. Bomb blasts have ripped through two buses in Lebanon, killing three people. (AFP)
Saad Hariri, the son of assassintated Lebanese Leader Rafik Hariri, claims the blasts were meant to keep people from attending demonstrations on Wednesday:
Parliament’s majority leader Saad Hariri described Tuesday’s twin bus bombings that left three people killed in the northern Metn town of Ain Alaq as a “cowardly terrorist attack” designed to disrupt ceremonies to commemorate his father’s 2005 assassination.
He said the attacks underscored the need for an international tribunal to try those suspected in the killing of former premier Rafik Hariri.
