The narrow, winding alleys of Burj al-Barajneh in south Beirut are enveloped in sadness and a tense resignation, with the grief echoed in the darkened skies and intermittent rain.
Almost overnight, new portraits of people killed — many of them children, mostly young boys — who were killed in twin suicide blasts on Thursday last week have been posted across the impoverished neighborhood.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks, in which a bomber detonated explosives next to a crowded bakery as people streamed onto the street after sunset prayers, and then, as onlookers rushed to aid those affected, a second bomber blew himself up just 50m up the road.
Photo: AP
With at least 43 dead and hundreds injured, it was Lebanon’s worst bombing since the August 2013 blasts in Tripoli, which killed 47 people.
However, if it had not been for Adel Termos, it could have been much worse.
Witnesses and family members said Termos, a 32-year-old father, rushed to tackle the second bomber from behind after seeing him approach the gathering crowd.
The intervention forced the bomber to detonate his suicide vest and is thought to have saved dozens of lives.
Termos died in the blast.
“Tell me congratulations,” said Basima Atat, Termos’ wife.
“My six-year-old daughter now says dad is a martyr, a hero, in heaven. Do you know what it means to be a hero?” she added.
Plastic chairs for the many mourners who visited the house over the past few days stood above rain-soaked asphalt, while Arabic coffee slowly smouldered on the coals nearby.
Festooned on the walls were flags of Hezbollah, which enjoys popular support in the majority-Shiite neighborhood, and an image of the party’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
Basima Atat clutched an image of Adel, who had been leaving a mosque after prayers to join his wife and daughter for dinner.
After the first bomb went off, he spoke with his wife over the telephone, telling her he was going to help the wounded.
After the second blast, his phone was switched off.
“I knew in my heart that he was martyred,” Basima said.
They had been married for seven years, engaged for five and in love for five before that, she said.
Shock at the atrocities has not worn off in Burj al-Barajneh. A loud boom echoes in the distance and conversation stops; people shake momentarily in fear of another blast. Panic recedes when the noise proves to be thunder, but it is always near the surface.
And the anger is clear.
“These people are not humans,” said Bilal Jelwane — Termos’ brother-in-law — of the suicide bombers. “If you disagree with someone, you don’t kill them. Imagine somebody coming to kill innocents in Allah’s name. We’re supposed to say Allahu Akbar when we are sacrificing sheep, not before slaughtering people.”
“The problem is these people think that by blowing themselves up they are going to join the prophet in heaven,” he added. “Our prophet is a prophet of mercy, our Islam is a religion of forgiveness, kindness, compassion, not a religion of killings and swords and slaughter.”
Many here blame Western governments for the rise of the Islamic Stage.
They say they feel a kinship with the civilians in France who died in attacks by the terror group just a day after the Beirut bombings.
Life goes on in the southern suburbs, which have endured a series of suicide bombings over the past two years in response to Hezbollah’s forceful intervention in Syria on the side of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The street where the suicide bombers struck last week is alive with traffic, though signs of the massacre remain — smashed windows, closed shop fronts, portraits of the dead, flower garlands and a shuttered mosque.
A sign proclaims that Dahiyeh, the Arabic name for the southern suburbs, will never bow.
Another admonishes the terrorists for wielding suicide vests, declaring: “If you were men, you would face us in the battlefield.”
“If you let fear of being blown up take hold of you, then you would just lock yourself up and cower at home,” said Hussein Shukr, who owns the bakery outside of which one of the suicide bombers killed and wounded dozens, and whose partner was severely wounded in the blast. “That’s not a way to live.”
“And even if they carried out another bombing, we’d rebuild again,” he added.
Nearby, at the site of the second bombing, a man called Hasan sold kaak, bread with ground thyme and sesame seeds, from a small cart. He had survived the bombing by chance — when the first explosion happened he rushed to help the wounded, only for the second bomber to blow himself up beside his cart.
“I own a kaak truck. What would he even gain by blowing himself up next to me?” he asked. “He wouldn’t have killed some important person. He would have managed to kill a kaak seller.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in