Twin blasts rocked a stronghold of Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah movement in southern Beirut Thursday evening leaving at least 41 dead and 200 others injured, officials said. The blasts shook Bourj al-Barajneh, one of the largest and most well-known primarily Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, the state-run National News Agency reported, according to CNN.
Police reports indicate that two men set off suicide vests in front of a shopping mall in the suburb within 490 feet and five minutes of each other.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks, but like most of the times they claim responsibility for a terrorist act over the internet, the veracity of their statement still needs to be confirmed.
BREAKING: Islamic State claims responsibility for Beirut suicide attacks.
— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) November 12, 2015
At least four nearby buildings were damaged, rescue workers were on the scene in the bombings' aftermath carrying out victims past piles of rubble and searching for survivors. Security forces closed off all entrances to Bourj al-Barajneh and cordoned off the scene while people tried to gather nearby, according to AFP.
The blast is the first to target Beirut's southern suburb since June 2014, when a suicide car bomb killed a security officer who had tried to stop the bomber.
On the other hand, attacks targeting Hezbollah strongholds throughout the country are fairly common. Between July 2013 and Feb. 2014, there were nine such attacks on Hezbollah strongholds, most claimed by Sunni extremists upset about Hezbollah's decision to send fighters into Syria to aid President Bashar al-Assad's regime against a Sunni-dominated uprising.
The attacks caused by widespread panic among those who were there, one eyewitness described the sound of the the sound of two blasts, saying, "When the second blast went off, I thought the world had ended."
