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2007 Bikfaya bombings | |
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Location | near Bikfaya, Lebanon |
Date | February 13, 2007 |
Target | Christian passengers of two civilian buses |
Attack type | Bombings |
Deaths | 3 |
Injured | 21 |
Perpetrators | Fatah al-Islam |
The 2007 Bikfaya bombings were two blasts on buses near Bikfaya, Lebanon which killed three people and injured 21 others. The bombings heightened tensions in the country following the Cedar Revolution, and on the eve of the second anniversary of the assassination of Rafic Hariri.
2007 Lebanon conflict |
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Bikfaya bombings |
On Tuesday, February 13, 2007, a bomb exploded on a bus transporting 26 people from Bteghrine to the Lebanese mountain village of Ain Alaq. A second bus following behind stopped, and then a bomb on that bus exploded. Killed were Michel Attar (born 1989), Laurice Gemayel, and Mahmoud Hammoud, an Egyptian laborer. A further 21 other people were injured. [1]
The two bombings occurred on the eve of a Cedar Revolution rally planned to commemorate the second anniversary of the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. The bombing occurred less than a mile from the Christian village of Bikfaya, the hometown of the former president, Amin Gemayel, whose son Pierre Gemayel, a cabinet minister and member of the anti-Syrian, March 14 Alliance, was assassinated by gunmen in November. [2] Amin Gemayel, also a member of the March 14 Alliance, had just returned from the United States where he met with president George W. Bush in the White House on February 8, 2007. In addition to scaring the Lebanese from attending the Cedar Revolution the following day, many analysts also saw the bombings in Gemayel's stronghold of Metn as a Syrian warning to Gemayel who was a possible candidate for the Lebanese presidency. The bombings did not deter hundreds of thousands of flag-waving Lebanese, Christians, Muslims, and Druze, to gather in Martyr's Square in Beirut on February 14 to honor Hariri and show support for the anti-Syrian, pro-western government of Fouad Saniora.[ citation needed ]
On March 14, 2007, Lebanese Internal Security, better known as the Sûreté Générale du Liban, arrested four Syrians who confessed to the bombings in Ain Alaq. [9] The Lebanese Interior Minister, Hassan Al Sabaa, believed that the four Syrians were members of a radical Palestinian group, Fatah al-Islam, which allegedly has close ties to the Syrian intelligence agency. [9] However, it was still not clear who actually ordered the attack. Syria denied the Lebanese allegations. [10]
On June 21, 2007, Lebanese State Prosecutor Saeed Mirza filed charges [11] against 16 Fatah al-Islam suspects accused of carrying out the bombings. Nine of the 16 suspects accused were in custody when the charges were filed; other, including Fatah al-Islam head Shaker al-Abssi were still being sought. The defendants include 10 Syrians, two Lebanese, three Palestinians (including one woman) and one Saudi national. [11]
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Fatah al-Islam is a Sunni Islamist militant group established in November 2006 in a Palestinian refugee camp, located in Lebanon. It has been described as a militant jihadist movement that draws inspiration from al-Qaeda. It became well known in 2007 after engaging in combat against the Lebanese Army in the Nahr al-Bared UNRWA Palestinian refugee camp. Following its defeat at Nahr el-Bared, the group relocated to the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp near Sidon in 2008. As of 2014, after the death or capture of many members, most of the surviving members of Fatah al-Islam are thought to have joined other groups in Lebanon and Syria including the Free Syrian Army, Al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
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The following lists events that happened in 2007 in Lebanon.