A bomb blast targeting Lebanese soldiers killed at least 14 people in the northern city of Tripoli on Wednesday just hours before a landmark visit by President Michel Sleiman to Syria.
Forty people were also wounded in the attack that ripped through a busy shopping street in the heart of the port city during the morning rush hour, a security official said.
A child who was polishing shoes on the street was among the 14 dead, the official said, adding that nine of those killed and many of the wounded were soldiers.
“My son! My son!,” screamed one mother striking her chest at a Tripoli hospital after learning that her 22-year-old soldier son was dead.
The army said the bomb was planted in a bag at a military gathering point in the Masarif Street commercial district of Tripoli and exploded near a bus carrying soldiers.
The force of the blast blew the remains of some of the dead on to the roofs of nearby buildings.
Sleiman, who was army chief until his election as president by MPs earlier this year, condemned what he called a “terrorist crime” and it was also denounced by Syria.
“The army and security forces will not be terrorised by attacks and crimes that target it and civil society, and the history of the army attests to that,” Sleiman said in a statement.
It was the deadliest attack on the army since a 15-week battle last year with Al-Qaeda inspired Islamist militants from a group called Fatah al-Islam in an impoverished Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli.
The army took control of the Nahr Al-Bared camp in September after the standoff in which 400 people, including 168 soldiers, were killed.
“I see this within a spate of attacks against the army that could be reprisal attacks for the army’s crushing of Fatah al-Islam last year,” said the head of the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies, Oussama Safa.
The security official said the bomb was made up of 20 kilogrammes of explosives.
“The army has surrounded the scene and begun to investigate the incident,” an army statement said, describing the attack as a “terrorist exploitation of the serious political controversies that have intensified in recent days.”
The Mediterranean port city has been rocked by deadly violence between anti-Syrian supporters of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora and his Damascus-backed rivals amid a long-running political crisis.
The attack came just a day after a national unity government formed by Siniora following 18 months of deadly tensions with the Hezbollah-led opposition finally won a vote of confidence in parliament.
The standoff had pushed the country to the brink of a new civil war and was only ended by an Arab-brokered power-sharing agreement in May.
In Tripoli, desperate families gathered at four hospitals to check on the fate of their loved ones but were blocked by security from entering.
One hospital official said identification was delayed because some bodies were mutilated beyond recognition.
In June and July, 23 people were killed in battles between Sunni Muslim supporters of Siniora and their Alawite opponents in the neighbourhoods of Bab Al-Tebbaneh and Jabal Mohsen which lie just a kilometre and a half from Masarif Street.
During the night, Bab Al-Tebbaneh was hit by a hand grenade and two rockets, an correspondent with AFP reported.
Bab Al-Tebbaneh is a Sunni stronghold while Jabal Mohsen is mainly Alawite.
There has been tension between the two communities ever since Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war. Alawites are an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam and straddle the border into neighbouring Syria whose President Bashar Al-Assad is a follower of the faith.
The explosion came hours before the Lebanese president was due to head to Damascus for a landmark summit with Al-Assad amid moves to establish diplomatic relations between the two countries for the first time.
“Syria staunchly denounces the criminal act perpetrated this morning in Tripoli that killed many innocent civilians,” the Syrian foreign ministry said.
There has been as a spate of assassinations of anti-Syrian public figures since 2005, most notably five-time prime minister Rafiq Hariri, which have been widely blamed on Damascus.
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