Lebanese authorities are reporting that a car bomb has been detonated in the predominately Shiite city of Hermel in the northeastern corner of the country near the Syrian border. According to AP, the explosion has resulted in causalities, but the number is as yet unspecified.
Hermel is south of the Syrian border town of Qusayr, where Lebanese Shia militia group Hizballah provided pivotal ground support in a battle last year to rid the city of Sunni rebels fighting to overthrow the government of Syria’s embattled President Bashar Assad.
Syria’s three-year civil war has begun to enmesh the country’s neighbors in what is increasingly becoming an all-out sectarian conflict between Shitte-aligned fighters and Sunni insurgents, stretching from western Iraq across to Lebanon.
[AP]
The explosion’s first pictures #Hermel pic.twitter.com/w53GDjrEmk
— Ali Hashem علي هاشم (@alihashem_tv) January 16, 2014