Details about bomb attack in Lebanon - Dahr al-Baidar

“He had a Syrian accent and told me he was Syrian from Zabadani,” Ramzi Sayegh, the owner of a shop in the eastern village of Sofar, told Al-Jadeed television.

During the interview, Sayegh identified the man in a photo released by the Lebanese Army a day earlier as the man who he reported to police.

The Army released a photo of a man suspected of being the suicide bomber behind the explosion, asking citizens with information to come forward.

Sayegh said the man he encountered was wearing a hat, a yellow T-shirt and a pair of faded jeans.

The man’s demeanour, his suspicious behaviour and his silver Nissan Murano, which the shop owner said was in bad shape, prompted Sayegh to contact the Sofar Police department.

“Two policemen came to me in a jeep, and I told them the direction where the man went,” he said, adding that his son contacted him an hour later to tell him that the man he reported had blown himself up at a police checkpoint.

On his way from the Bekaa Valley to Beirut, the suicide bomber stopped in Sofar for coffee, a security source told reporters. The shop owner immediately contacted police after he noticed the customer was too nervous.

The bomber then made his way to Aley but raced back to the Bekaa after security forces intercepted his vehicle.

At the Dahr al-Baidar checkpoint, police officers cut off the road with a pick-up truck. When asked to step out for inspection, the driver detonated the explosive-rigged vehicle, killing a 49-year-old police officer and wounding 32 other people.

The 4WD was rigged with at least 25 kilograms of explosives and an investigation is ongoing to determine the bomber’s target and who was behind the attack.

The shadowy group Free Sunnis of Baalbek Brigade claimed responsibility for the bombing, saying they could not “reach their target today but they will do so later.”
 
Investigations in Friday's car bombing in the Dahr al-Baydar region are underway with the concerned authorities looking into telephone calls linked to the incident, as well as surveillance camera footage, reported the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat on Sunday.

It revealed that the authorities have obtained the telecom data connected to the attack.

The data will help uncover the activities prior to the bombing and the route taken by the attacker.

The data may also lead to other potential attacks, said the daily.

The security forces have meanwhile been conducting searches for potential suicide bombers.
They have carried out sweeps of several regions where suspected terrorists may be hiding, added al-Hayat.

The security forces did not however disclose the areas they have been searching.

A member of the Internal Security Forces was killed and at least 30 people were wounded in a car bombing that targeted an ISF checkpoint in the Dahr al-Baydar area in the eastern Bekaa region on Friday.