A bomb exploded near a Lebanese army barracks in Beirut early on Thursday, destroying a car and slightly wounding a soldier, security sources said.
The sources said a local newspaper had received a telephone call from someone claiming to speak on behalf of al-Qaida and declaring that a security target would be bombed in Beirut in retaliation for the arrest last month of 13 group members.
The explosion occurred some three hours later at around 2 a.m. (7 p.m. ET Wednesday) outside the Fakhreddine Barracks in the Ramlet al-Baida district of the capital, shattering windows in nearby buildings.
The sources earlier said the blast was caused by a car bomb but they later said it had been caused by an explosive charge near or under the car.
Caller threatens 3 attacks
Al-Balad newspaper reported in its morning edition that it had received a phone call in which a man claiming to be al-Qaida’s representative in Lebanon gave the authorities two weeks to release two women detainees.
“The caller threatened to launch three qualitative military operations simultaneously and clash with the security forces if the two women... are not freed,” al-Balad said in a report.
The women are the fiancee and mother of an al-Qaida member who was recently executed for murdering three military intelligence agents.
The paper also received a written statement from “The International Islamic Front” denouncing the January arrests.
Lebanon has been rocked by more than a dozen explosions in the past 12 months, the largest of which was a truck bomb that killed former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri and 22 others in Beirut on Feb. 14.
A U.N. inquiry has implicated senior Syrian security officials and their Lebanese allies in the murder. Three anti-Syrian politicians and journalists have been killed and two people wounded since in separate smaller explosions.
Al-Qaida network in Lebanon?
The Lebanese authorities said last month they had arrested 13 members of al-Qaida and sources say they had been setting up a network for the group in the country.
The group had been believed to have recruited Lebanese and Palestinian refugees to fight U.S.-led forces in Iraq under the leadership of Abu Moussab al-Zarqawi, the sources said. But in recent months there have been indications that the group was stepping up its activities in Lebanon.
Zarqawi has claimed responsibility for a Katyusha rocket attack against northern Israel from south Lebanon in late December. But though Lebanese security sources believe pro-Syrian Palestinian guerrillas were behind that attack, they say al-Zarqawi’s willingness to take credit for it showed he might have an agenda in Lebanon.