Lebanon bids farewell to General Security officer killed in south Beirut blast

                        
The body of General Security officer Abdel Karim Hodroj who was killed in Monday's attack arrived on Wednesday to the scene of the explosion in Beirut's Tayouneh region ahead of his funeral which is set to take place in the region of Rawdat al-Shahidayn.            

A suicide bomber blew up his car in Beirut on Monday night near an army checkpoint, killing Hodroj and wounding several people watching the soccer World Cup in a nearby cafe. The attack was claimed by an al-Qaeda off-shoot group known as the Abdullah Azzam Brigades who vowed further attacks against Hezbollah strongholds.            

Security forces have been on high alert since a suicide bomber killed one person and wounded 37 near the Syrian border on Friday in an attack that narrowly missed Major General Abbas Ibrahim, head of Lebanon's General Security department.         

Lebanon has suffered a wave of sectarian violence linked to the war in Syria which, like its neighbor Iraq, is fighting a Sunni insurgency.          

Militants, including the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), are sweeping through the north and west of Iraq towards the Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad.           

Hezbollah has been fighting alongside President Bashar al-Assad's forces in Syria against the mainly Sunni Muslim rebels, who have also been supported by Lebanese Sunnis.         

The conflict has spilled over into Lebanon, with rocket attacks on Shi'ite towns in the Bekaa Valley, close to the border with Syria, and bombings of Shi'ite and Sunni targets in Lebanon's main coastal cities.          


LBCI/REUTERS