Al Nusra declares responsibility for Hermel bombing

An Islamist terrorist group suspected of links to al-Qaida declared Saturday responsibility for the deadly bombing in Hermel in which 4 people were killed and dozens were in injured.

This development comes after the Al Qaeda linked al Nusra Front declared last week that all the areas in Lebanon where the Iranian backed Shiite Hezbollah militant group operates are “legitimate targets” for attack and warned the Sunnis to avoid them.

“We, al-Nusra Front in Lebanon, announce that Iran’s party (Hezbollah) and all its bases and strongholds are legitimate targets for us, wherever they are,” the group said in a statement which was posted on the Internet on January 24, 2014.

Al Nusra also declared Saturday that ” the fact we have been successful in targeting the same locations is another proof of Hezbollah’s increased weakness as a result of its involvement in the Syrian war ”

The war in Syria has inflamed sectarian tensions in Lebanon, with Hezbollah backing Assad’s regime despite the Baabda declaration.

The Baabda Declaration is an agreement that was reached between Lebanon’s opposing political leaders in 2012 which calls for distancing Lebanon from regional and international conflicts.

According to observers the Al Nusra was never active in Lebanon before Hezbollah went to Syria. The first time Al Nusra was mentioned in Lebanon when former PM Rafik Hariri was killed and former security chief Jamil Sayyed pressured TV media to air the Al-Nusra ‘s Abou Addas fake claim of responsibility for the assassination. Al Nusra’s , and Al Qaeda’s name surfaced again in 2012 when former Lebanese minister Michel Samaha was sent by President Bashar Assad to plant bombs to create sectarian strife all over Lebanon and then have Al Qaeda claim responsibility.

“This is what Bashar wants,” Lebanese security sources quoted Samaha as saying in August 2012 of Syrian President Bashar Assad, in a video shot by a Lebanese undercover agent for the Internal Security Forces Information Branch.

But Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi blamed Israel for the explosion in Hermel:

” The beneficiary of the Hermel explosion and of Syria and Iraq’s bombings is one party only, and it is Israel.” He said following the explosion