Leading Lebanese politicians condemn Beirut car bomb blast

There was an overall condemnation today of the car bomb blast that rocked an area south of Beirut from many quarters including president Michel Sleiman and leading Lebanese politicians, among them the prime minister Tamam Salam and parliament speaker Nabih Berri. Acts like the car bomb in the Beer al Abed neighborhood which injured 41 people and caused extensive damage to buildings recalls dark times the Lebanese were plagued with in the recent past, said a statement issued by the office of president Sleiman. The latter reiterated in the statement a previous call to all factions in the country to get together at a round table where all contentious issues could be easily hammered out. Saying that the bomb blast was meant to create deep divisions among the Lebanese and to destabilize the country, a number of top Lebanese politicians deplored the incident, including house speaker Nabih Berri who issued a statement noting that the car bomb was aimed at pitting various Lebanese groups one against another and appealing to all these groups to be on the alert for such sinister and divisive incidents. Prime minister Tamam Salam, who is entrusted with forming a new government, described the car bombing as a crime with the insidious intent to destabilize the security of the country. He urged Lebanese politicians to work sincerely to keep the country from being dragged into the quagmire of regional politics as evidenced by events in neighboring Syria. Former prime minister Saad al-Hariri said the car bomb blast took aim at one of the most crowded sections of southern Beirut. It was a criminal act intended to kill as many innocent people as possible, he said, underscoring the need for national unity in the face of such dangers. The US embassy here also condemned the car bombing incident in a statement it issued, urging Lebanese authorities to conduct a thorough investigation of it. Meanwhile the Lebanese army issued a statement of its own saying "at 11:00 am local time a booby-trapped car parked at a parking lot in the neighborhood of Beer al-Abed was detonated by remote control, causing a blast that injured dozens of people and destroyed a lot of properties." Many of the injured sustained wounds caused by flying shattered glass, said Ali Kareem, director of Bahman Hospital where many of the injured were taken.