Lebanon Mourns 41 People Killed In Twin Bomb Attacks

Lebanon was holding a day of mourning Friday for 41 people killed in twin bombings on a busy shopping street in southern Beirut, the bloodiest such attack for years which was claimed by

the Islamic State group.

More than 200 people were also wounded, many of them seriously, by the explosions in a narrow shopping street in the Burj al-Barajneh neighbourhood that is a bastion of the Shiite Hezbollah movement.The attack appeared to mark a return to the campaign against the group between 2013 and 2014, ostensibly in revenge for its military support of regime forces in neighbouring Syria’s civil war.

Two men wearing suicide vests carried out the attack, said the army, while the body of a third who had failed to detonate his explosive device was found at the scene of the second blast.

Schools and universities will be shut across Lebanon on Friday after Prime Minister Tammam Salam announced a national day of mourning, local media reported.

The street in the poor, mainly Shiite Muslim neighbourhood, normally home to a market, was stained red with blood according to an AFP photographer, who saw bodies inside nearby shops.

Surrounding buildings were badly damaged by the blasts and security forces were trying to cordon off the scene and keep people from gathering.

Sunni jihadist group IS claimed the attack, saying its “soldiers of the Caliphate” detonated explosives planted on a motorbike on the street, in an online statement.

“After the apostates gathered in the area, one of the knights of martyrdom detonated his explosive belt in the midst of them,” the statement added, without referring to Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria, much of which is under IS control.

The statement could not be independently verified, but it followed the usual format of IS claims of responsibility and was circulated on jihadist online accounts.