For the fourth time in as many weeks, a suicide car bombing has torn through a Shi’ite neighborhood in Lebanon, this time attacking the same Beirut suburb as earlier this month, and killing four people, wounding 35 others.
As with the previous bombing, Jabhat al-Nusra’s Lebanon auxiliary claimed credit for the attack, saying it was “retaliation” for Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian Civil War.
And just like the last time, there was no indication that any of the victims were actually Hezbollah officials. Rather the attack seemed to hit the neighborhood on the assumption that a Shi’ite neighborhood must be a Hezbollah stronghold.
Jabhat al-Nusra is one of several Syrian rebel factions operated by al-Qaeda, and has recently been dubbed the “good al-Qaeda” by Western media, to differentiate it from the al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) faction. Tactically, however, Nusra remains centered on using suicide attacks against civilian targets.