BAALBEK, Lebanon // The United Nations urged Lebanon’s feuding factions to refrain from getting involved in Syria’s crisis after a suicide car bomb left at least four people dead near the border on Saturday.
The explosion happened at a petrol station in Hermel, a stronghold of the Shiite movement Hizbollah.
Al Nusra Front in Lebanon, a group named after the Qaeda-linked militia fighting in Syria, claimed the attack, saying it was a suicide bombing in response to Hizbollah’s involvement in Syria.
It was the seventh attack to target Hizbollah in Lebanon since the middle of last year, when the group sent men to Syria to fight alongside President Bashar Al Assad’s troops against mainly Sunni rebel groups.
“At least four people were killed and more than 15 wounded, two or three of them in critical condition,” the interior minister, Marwan Charbel, said.
The United Nations Security Council condemned the “terrorist attack” and called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.
Council members also appealed to all Lebanese people “to preserve national unity in the face of attempts to undermine the country’s stability” and for all parties to refrain from any involvement in the Syrian crisis.
The UN secretary general’s spokesman Martin Nesirky said Ban Ki-moon also strongly condemned the car bombing and extended his condolences to the victims’ families.
The explosion sparked a huge blaze that hindered the arrival of emergency services.
Security forces later closed off the area and firefighters managed to extinguish the blaze.
The petrol station is part of a charitable network set up by Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, a leading Shiite cleric and Hizbollah spiritual guide who died in 2010.
It was the second blast in less than a month to hit Hermel, in the east of the country and close to the border with war-ravaged Syria.
On January 16, a car bombing outside the main government administration building in Hermel killed three people.
That attack was also claimed by Al Nusra Front in Lebanon, a group that has emerged recently.
It is unclear if there is any relation between the group and Al Nusra in Syria.
The outbreak of the conflict in Syria in March 2011 has inflamed sectarian tensions in Lebanon.
While Hizbollah has sent fighters to battle alongside Mr Al Assad’s forces, many Lebanese Sunnis back the rebels fighting his regime.
Lebanon’s northern port city of Tripoli has seen regular clashes between Sunni groups and Alawites, the Shiite offshoot sect to which Mr Al Assad belongs.
Other attacks in Lebanon have targeted opponents of Hizbollah and the Syrian regime, including Sunni politician Mohammad Chatah, who was killed in a car bomb blast on December 27 in Beirut.
* Agence France-Presse
