BEIRUT // Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon narrowly escaped a twin suicide bombing outside the embassy that killed 23 people, including an aide and four guards.
“Ambassador Ghazanfar Rokn-Abadi was on his way with cultural attache Ibrahim Ansari to see Lebanese culture minister Gaby Layyoun,” an Iranian diplomatic source said yesterday.
“The attache was waiting in the car near the entrance when the first suicide attacker blew himself up. The ambassador, who would have left the building within a minute, went back.”
Mr Ansari and four embassy guards were among the dead in Tuesday’s attack, said Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who arrived in Beirut yesterday.
“Among the innocent, pure martyrs were four guards of the Islamic Republic of Iran, as were the Iranian cultural attache, Sheikh Ibrahim Ansari, and an innocent Iranian woman,” he said.
The attack was claimed by an Al Qaeda-affiliated group and is the first of its kind against the Lebanon mission of Iran, a close ally of the Syrian leader, Bashar Al Assad.
Iran has had a military adviser mission in Syria since 1980 and is the key backer of Lebanon’s Shiite militant group Hizbollah, which has intervened in the conflict in support of Mr Al Assad’s forces.
The Iranian mission hit by Tuesday’s bombings is in a Hizbollah bastion in south Beirut.
Hizbollah’s political bureau chief, Sheikh Ibrahim Amin Al Sayed, denounced the bombings as a “cowardly, desperate act”.
He dared Hizbollah’s opponents “to come fight in Syria”.
The Russian ambassador, Alexander Zaspekin, said the bombings were an attempt to torpedo a peace conference the United Nations is trying to organise next month.
* Agence France-Presse
