Lebanese troops have foiled a terrorist suicide attack in southern Lebanon, prime minister-designate Fuad Saniora said on Saturday.
Saniora’s comments came a few hours after Lebanese troops shot and killed a Palestinian suicide bomber near Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp on Saturday.
A senior military official said a man wearing an explosive belt approached an army checkpoint just outside the Ein el-Hilweh Palestinian camp on the outskirts of the southern city of Sidon.
The man, wearing an explosive belt of 2kg of TNT and 1kg of metal balls, tried to blow himself up inside an armored personnel carrier with the aim of killing as many soldiers as possible, the official told reporters.
Troops opened fire and killed the man instantly, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
A military explosives expert removed the explosive belt the man was wearing, and an investigation is under way.
The would-be suicide bomber was identified as Mahmoud Yassin Ahmad, a 28-year-old Palestinian who lives in the Ein el-Hilweh camp.
Saniora described incident as a “terrorist” attack that has been thwarted by Lebanese soldiers.
“The troops in Ein el-Hilweh were certainly alert and — thank God — they acted in a way that foiled this suicide bomber’s terrorist intention,” Saniora told reporters after meeting with Lebanese President Michel Suleiman.
Saniora briefed Suleiman on the outcome of two days of consultations with heads of parliamentary blocs on forming a new national unity Cabinet in line with an Arab-brokered deal that ended a prolonged political crisis. He refused to give a date as to when the new Cabinet would be formed.
Security officials said soldiers manning the army checkpoint saw a young man climbing out of a car a few meters away and then he threw a hand grenade at them which failed to explode.
Soldiers warned the man not to move, but instead moved quickly toward the checkpoint with his hands on his waist.
Fearing he might have a suicide belt, the soldiers then shot and killed him.
The army then sealed off the area.
Security officials said the man belonged to the militant Jund al-Sham, a group which follows the extremist ideology of al-Qaeda.
The group has in the past clashed with Palestinian guerrillas of the Fatah movement and Lebanese troops deployed around Ein el-Hilweh. It has been blamed or claimed responsibility for a number of bombings and gun battles in Lebanon and Syria.
Jund al-Sham is Arabic for Soldiers of al-Sham — an old Arabic word for the region of Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.
Ein el-Hilweh, with a population of 70,000, is the largest of Lebanon’s 12 Palestinian refugee camps. It is notorious for lawlessness and is frequently rocked by gunfights between armed groups jockeying for power. A number of fugitives live in the camp, which is under Palestinian jurisdiction and off limits to Lebanese authorities.
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