Syria's War Becoming Lebanon's

"Lots of Syrians got killed and hurt because they were out using the UNICEF ration cards to buy food."
"I could not believe the dead that I saw in the road. There were people missing their arms and legs everywhere. It is the first time we have ever had suicide bombers here."
Peter Sheim, 57, Canadian electrical engineer, Ain al-Sikke, Lebanon

"I thought I was going to die because they might come and make the next bomb here."
"[Daesh was] not really talked that much about by my friends before but we know they cut heads off. Iraqis, Syrians, Palestinians, Christians, Muslims -- Daesh only kills. If you are not with them you are against them."
Mustafa Kalbani, 14, Syrian refugee in Lebanon

"A soldier of the caliphate blew himself up in the stronghold of the heretics [Shias]. After the apostates crowded around the site of the explosion, a second martyr blew himself up using his explosives belt."
"Soon, very soon, the blood will flow like an ocean [in Russia since Moscow is bombing ISIL in Syria]."
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant statement of claim

Twin explosions in the Lebanese capital killed at least 44 people last week, with ISIL claiming responsibility [Hassan Abdallah/Reuters]

"Until now the detained include seven Syrians and two Lebanese - one of them a [would-be] suicide bomber and the other a trafficker who smuggled them across the border from Syria." 
"The whole suicide bombing network and its supporters were arrested in the 48 hours following the explosion."
Lebanese Interior Minister Nuhad Mashnuq

"ISIL is waging an open war against Muslim and European societies in the Middle East and Europe."
"Those killed in the Beirut bombing, many of whom were children and the elderly, have paid an unnecessary price."
"ISIL is engaged in terrorism only to defame the good name of Islam and it is serving only those who wish to keep Islam stigmatised by the terrorism label."
Ali Meqdad, member, Lebanese parliament [close ties to Hezbollah]

Islamic State has been busy, both close to home and abroad. Two bombing events over the past several months in Turkey, both targeting Turkish Kurds and leftists, killing over 100 people, leaving open suspicion that the government in Turkey may have had something to do with those misfortunes, given its new war with its Kurdish demographic. And then there was the downing of the Russian passenger jet killing all 224 aboard flying out of Egypt's Sharm el-Sheikh.

Since Hezbollah -- a Shiite terrorist group by any other name -- has fought with the Syrian military at the behest of its mutual sponsor Iran, they too have been targets, but by Syrian Sunni rebels. Now Islamic State has turned their suicide bombers to action against Hezbollah-held territory in Lebanon. And the Lebanese authorities have arrested nine suspects in that double bombing that took 44 lives on Thursday targeting a busy shopping street in Burj al-Barajneh, in  Ain al-Sikka.

The site of Thursday's twin suicide bombings in the Burj al-Barajneh neighborhood of Beirut, Lebanon. Credit Bilal Hussein/Associated Press
As with previous bombing events, this one left over 240 people wounded when the bombs hit a crowded souk in the southern Beirut Shia suburb. As funerals took place one after another, Hezbollah gunmen set off bursts of machine-gun fire. In the last 30 months 18 terrorist attacks have taken in place in Lebanon; this being the second claimed by ISIL.

Ironically, while Lebanese authorities have arrested nine, seven of them Syrians as being implicated in the bombings (living in former Palestinian refugee camps), many of the victims of the double bombing were Syrian themselves, refugees who fled the terror in Syria, targets of the Alawite Shia regime. They felt they had reason to believe that Lebanon promised them safe harbour from the violence that stalked them in Syria.

Families were disarmed, never imagining the violence to take place while they were making preparation for Friday prayers and the coming weekend before the bombing. Both the Syrian civilians and the Lebanese -- who have been hauled into the sectarian war that has pitted Sunni Muslims against Shiite Muslims in an impenetrable network of suspicion, hatred and slaughter involving Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Iran in a struggle for dominance -- are dispirited and distraught over the turn their lives have taken.

Even Al-Manar TV, a propaganda arm of the terrorist group Hezbollah that has a stranglehold on Lebanon, has been devoting itself to vehemently condemning Islamic State, suspending for the time being its hateful slander and war-mongering drivel aimed at Israel. The fear that the civil war in Syria is preparing to spill into Lebanon because of Hezbollah involvement has created an atmosphere of dread in the country.

But all of this has taken place in Hezbollah territory. After the blasts had faded yellow and green Hezbollah flags sprang up everywhere in a symbolic defiance. Apartments and shops that had received heavy damage in the attack were covered with flags. And senior Hezbollah clerics, visiting the explosion site on Friday held aloft banners declaring "We are afraid of no one", echoing, in a strange sense, French President Hollande's vow that terrorists would never succeed in causing France to tremble in fear despite the devastation that Paris has experienced.