Islamic State claims responsibility for twin blasts that kill 37 in Beirut

BEIRUT – The Islamic State group took responsibility Thursday for twin bombings that ripped through a busy residential district of south Beirut. The blasts killed at least 37 people and wounded nearly 200, authorities said.

The attack – by a pair of suicide assailants wearing belts packed with explosives, the authorities said – was the deadliest strike in the Lebanese capital in more than a year.

The neighborhood targeted is home to many Shiite Muslims who support Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shiite political and paramilitary group that is fighting in Syria in support of President Bashar Assad. Hezbollah is an archenemy of IS and other al-Qaida-style Sunni Muslim extremist factions operating in both Syria and Lebanon and opposed to Assad’s rule.

IS and related Sunni extremist groups regularly vow to attack Hezbollah on its home turf.

The bombings in Bourj al-Barajneh shattered months of calm that had prevailed in Beirut despite the bloody war raging in neighboring Syria and periodic episodes of spillover violence elsewhere in Lebanon.

A third would-be bomber apparently was killed at the scene Thursday by one of his cohorts’ blasts before he was able to blow himself up, the Lebanese army said in a statement. His belt failed to detonate, the army said.

In its statement on social media, IS gave a varying version of events, saying the initial explosion was set off in a rigged motorbike parked on a street. As “apostates” gathered at the site of the first blast, the militant group said, a suicide operative blew himself up for maximum lethal effect.

The official Lebanese news service said IS had named the three attackers: two Palestinians and a Syrian national.

Sunni Islamist groups largely dominate the armed uprising against Assad’s secular government, a conflict now in its fifth year.

Hezbollah’s military aid is widely credited with helping Assad stay in power. The presence of Hezbollah militiamen bolstered a thinly stretched Syrian army that has suffered high casualties fighting on numerous fronts.

IS arose from the tumult of the Syrian conflict and now controls a self-declared “caliphate” in vast swaths of territory in Syria and neighboring Iraq.

A U.S.-led coalition is bombing IS in Syria and Iraq, while Russian and Syrian government warplanes are also attacking IS in Syria. Still, IS appears far from being defeated.