Lebanese president to hold security talks after landmark bombing

Residents gather at the site of an explosion near the Taqwa Mosque in Tripoli Lebanon's president Michel Sleiman cut short an external visit on Friday to return to Beirut following a double bombing in the northern city of Tripoli that is the worst attack on Lebanese soil since its civil war.
Two powerful explosions, minutes apart, killed at 42 people in Lebanon's main northern city of Tripoli on Friday, according to medical and security sources, while Lebanese media reports said the death toll topped 60.
Either figure would be the highest death toll of an attack in Lebanon since its 1975-1990 civil war.
Sleiman is scheduled to meet with security leaders and senior officials to discuss the measures necessary to protect Lebanon’s stability.
Meanwhile, Public Prosecutor Samir Hammoud met with Internal Security Forces chief Ibrahim Basbous and a number of other security leaders, calling on them to intensifying their investigations to identify and arrest those involved in the recent explosions, and put them on trial.
Chairperson al-Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc, Fouad Siniora, expressed his condolences for the families of the victims of Friday’s attacks.
"Such actions aim to push the residents of Tripoli to cause unrest due to their increased anger, which would not achieve the interests of the Lebanese city," he said. He linked the bombings to the alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria on Wednesday, adding that recent bombings in a number of Lebanese cities were an attempt to distract attention from the massacres he said were being committed by the Syrian regime and the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah against the Syrian people.
However, a statement from the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Lebanese Forces, Samir Geagea, said that condemnations by politicians would not benefit Lebanese citizens, adding that a solution needed to be found to overcome the current “conspiracy” Lebanon faces.
The Grand Mufti of Lebanon, Mohammad Rashid Qabbani said the attack had hit at the heart of Sunni Muslims in Lebanon, and expressed his condolences for the families of the victims.
The first of Friday’s double blasts rocked the city centre near the home of outgoing Prime Minister Najib Mikati, although his office said he was not in Tripoli at the time.
According to Al Jazeera news channel, the bomb went off outside al-Salam mosque in the Mina area of central Tripoli, as worshippers were leaving after Friday afternoon prayers.
The second explosion occurred outside the al-Taqwa Mosque in the city's Abu Ali Square, near the port of the restive city, said the National News Agency.
Tripoli has a Sunni Muslim majority and has been marred by deadly violence linked to the 29-month conflict in neighbouring Syria.

Sources told Arab Today that the prayer leaders at both mosques adhere to the hardline Salafist interpretation of Islam.
However Lebanese Interior Minister Marwan Charbel told Arab Today that the explosions did not target any specific political or religious figure in Tripoli.
He also denied reports that the explosions targeted General Ashraf Refi, former Director General of the Internal Security Forces, confirming that General Refi and his family are safe, however their home, which is close to the site of one  of the explosions, had been damaged.
Syria's civil war has sharply polarized the country along sectarian lines and between supporters and opponents of the regime of President Bashar Assad. Tripoli has previously seen clashes between Sunnis and Alawites, a Shiite offshoot sect to which Assad belongs.
Hundreds of furious people gathered outside the Al-Taqwa mosque shouting curses at Hezbollah and the Syrian regime.
The powerful Shiite movement, whose militia has been fighting for months alongside Assad's troops, linked the Tripoli attacks to the one in Beirut on August 15, which killed 22 people and injured more than 300.
It said they were part of a plan to "plunge Lebanon into chaos and destruction".
Former premier Saad Hariri, a Sunni and Hezbollah opponent, said the "authors of dissension do not want Lebanon to live in peace for one minute; they want the killing machine to mow down the lives of innocents across Lebanon".
Additional source: AFP