BEIRUT: Bank’s Security Camera Films Jeitawi Bombers PlantingExplosi

BANK’S SECURITY CAMERA FILMS JEITAWI BOMBERS PLANTING EXPLOSIVE BAGS AND FLEEING

NaharNet, Lebanon
Sept 18 2005

Naharnet.com

Police investigators are focusing on a film taken by a security
camera of a bank at the scene of the Jeitawi bombing to pin down the
identity of two assailants seen planting two bags of explosives in
between parked cars near a coffee shop that took the brunt of the
explosion’s impact, An Nahar reported on Sunday.

Witnesses have told police they saw the two bag carriers climbing
out of a private car driven by a third man. The same car returned to
pick them up and raced off after explosives were placed on target,
according to An Nahar.

Investigators hope to establish the identity of the bombers and their
car driver from the film that was taken off the security camera of
a Byblos Bank branch overlooking the scene of the blast that rocked
Jeitawi’s St. Louis alleyway five minutes before midnight of Friday
-Saturday.

The owner of the cafe, a Lebanese Armenian in his sixties, was killed
in the blast and a total of 28 people in the shop and pedestrians
around it were injured. Police said Sunday that only three of the
wounded people remained hospitalized and the rest were given quick
first aid treatment and discharged.

Residents of the densely populated stricken street in a Christian
neighborhood of the Lebanese capital are still taking stock of the
damage caused by the explosion to their homes and shops, bakeries and
groceries. Beirut’s municipality launched a fund-raising campaign to
help residents to repair the damage.

An official statement said the first $100,000 donation came from Sheikh
Jassem Mohammed Al Bahr, reportedly a Kuwaiti. The City Council has
decided to extend an initial aid of $500 to every victim pending a
survey of the damage by Lebanon’s Higher Relief Board.

It was the 8th such bombing since March 19. Anti-Syrian politicians
blamed the new attack, like the previous bombings, to Syria’s secret
service and allied Lebanese intelligence operatives.

But Hizbullah which strongly condemned the Jeitawi blast as a
terrorist act of destabilization, publicly warned against handing
down prejudgments.

The warning seems to suggest the Party of God is determined to absolve
Syria from guilt no matter what and maintain its alliance with the
Assad regime although it has been domestically and internationally
coerced into terminating 29 years of ruthless tutelage over Lebanon
last April.