海角大神

Rockets have been criss-crossing Lebanon's northern Bekaa Valley in the past week, striking Sunni and Shiite areas and inflaming sectarian tensions in an area adjacent to Syria's bloody battlefields.聽

In retaliation for a deadly rocket attack on a Sunni town in the Bekaa, a聽suicide car bomber blew himself up today in the Shiite-populated southern suburbs of Beirut, about two hours away, killing at least four in the third such attack since the start of the year in a Shiite neighborhood.聽

The incidents illustrate how Lebanon is descending further into Shiite vs. Sunni, tit-for-tat violence in a country that knows well the horrors of all-out civil war.聽

鈥淟ebanon has entered a circle of madness and we expect more bombings in the country,鈥� said Walid Jumblatt, paramount leader of Lebanon鈥檚 Druze community who has sought to straddle the Shiite-Sunni divide.聽

The Al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, which has been fighting alongside Syrian armed rebels, claimed responsibility for Tuesday's car bombing, which occurred a few dozen yards from a previous suicide attack on Jan. 2. The group said the attack was retaliation for the death of five children聽on Jan. 17, when rockets struck in the northern Bekaa, a bastion of support for Syrian rebels seeking to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.

Jabhat al-Nusra also claimed responsibility for a suicide car bomb attack in the Shiite town of Hermel in the northern Bekaa on Jan. 16, which killed three people, and for a cross-border rocket attack, also against , in December.聽

鈥淭hanks to God, a response was made to the massacres of the party of Iran against the children of Syria and Arsal,鈥� Jabhat al-Nusra said in a statement on Twitter, referring to the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah.

Shiite 'pig'

Hezbollah聽has dispatched聽several thousand fighters to聽Syria to聽assist the Assad regime, provoking deep anger among the Syrian opposition and its largely Sunni support base in Lebanon. Shiite-populated areas of Lebanon have been struck repeatedly by car bomb attacks since Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah鈥檚 leader, confirmed last May that his party was fighting in Syria, and the phenomenon of Lebanese Sunni suicide bombers began appearing for the first time in November.

On Jan. 17, a day after the suicide bomb attack on Hermel, 11 grad-style rockets, at least some fitted with warheads designed for maximum casualties, struck Arsal, 14 miles to the south, killing seven people, including five children.聽

Relatives of the slain children said the blast from the first rocket on the edge of Arsal prompted six children from one family to run outside to see what had happened.

鈥淭he second rocket landed among them, killing five of them,鈥� says Derard Hujairy, the children鈥檚 uncle, standing by the small impact crater a few yards from the house. The sixth child was critically injured and is in hospital.

A Lebanese army checkpoint controls the only road from the Bekaa into Arsal. Lebanese troops also man other checkpoints on some of the dirt tracks on the outskirts of the town that wind toward the border with Syria. But the rugged, barren mountains to the north and east of the town have become bases for Syrian rebels and their Lebanese allies.聽

The anger of residents at the rocket strike was palpable and manifested itself in slurs against Shiites. "This is the scud of that pig Nasrallah, who used to boast about hitting Israel," said one relative of the dead children.聽

Others were more philosophical.聽

"There's nothing we can do," says Salah Hojeiri, another uncle of the children. "A massacre has been committed against children and sadly all the politicians do is talk about sectarianism while we who support the [Syrian] revolution are paying the price."

Dangerous suspicion

After inspecting the site of the rocket attacks, the Lebanese army declared that the missiles had been fired from somewhere east of Arsal. The distinction is important. The border with Syria lies eight miles east of Arsal, across mountainous terrain. The assertion that the rockets were fired from the east suggests that the perpetrators were Syrian rebels, rather than Hezbollah.

However, residents are unconvinced. They ask why Syrian rebels would fire rockets into Arsal, a base of support whose population has more than doubled with the influx of nearly 40,000聽mostly Sunni聽Syrian refugees. Furthermore, Syrian rebels have repeatedly fired rockets at Hermel and surrounding Shiite villages in the northern Bekaa from mountains north of Arsal,聽making it unlikely that the attack聽was a result of an aiming accident.聽

Local residents say the Lebanese army deliberately covered up the true source of the rocket fire in an attempt to defuse tensions between Sunnis and Shiites in the Bekaa. They maintain that the rockets were fired from west of Arsal, in Shiite-populated territory where Hezbollah has a strong influence.

鈥淲e had people examine the impact sites and we are certain that the rockets were fired somewhere between Zabboud and Hermel,鈥� says Abu聽Omar, a resident of Arsal who provides logistical support for Syrian rebel factions.

Hezbollah denied it fired rockets into Arsal, saying such accusations were 鈥渄angerous.鈥� Adding to the speculation was a claim of responsibility from the Al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). The group said on Facebook and other forms of social media that it had attacked the Arsal headquarters of the Free Syrian Army, a moderate Syrian rebel group, with which it is locked into three weeks of fierce fighting in northern Syria.

Convictions trump facts

Several Shiite villages near Hermel also were struck by rockets聽on Friday, without causing casualties.聽On Saturday, four people were wounded when more rockets hit Arsal and Ras Baalbek, a 海角大神 village five miles north of Arsal.

The rockets that hit Ras Baalbek聽on Jan. 18 and Arsal聽on Jan. 17 were fitted with anti-personnel warheads consisting of hundreds of 6mm diameter steel ball bearings. Hezbollah is known to possess Chinese-manufactured 122mm Katyusha rockets carrying the same type of warhead and fired some into northern Israel during the month-long war in 2006.

Hezbollah is believed to have acquired the Chinese rockets from Syria. That means that the rocket is probably in the Syrian Army鈥檚 inventory and, therefore, possibly being used by the rebels who in many cases have armed themselves with weapons looted from military bases.

Still, the truth behind the attack on Arsal has been overshadowed by the perception of local residents that Hezbollah was responsible. In this fiercely tribal corner of north Lebanon, retaliation seems only to be a matter of time.

鈥淚t鈥檚 not over,鈥� says Abu Omar. 鈥淭here will be repercussions.鈥�

In Hermel, workmen were repairing the damage caused by Thursday鈥檚 suicide car bombing outside the municipality offices. The Shiite residents here say they expect more car bombings and rocket attacks in the area and are taking precautions.

鈥淭he time is coming when we will have checkpoints on all the roads around here and we won鈥檛 let in anyone who is a Sunni,鈥� says a local prominent businessman.