Hezbollah Stronghold in Beirut Targeted in Rocket Attack

by Ilan Gattegno, David Baron, Gadi Golan, Danny Brenner, News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff

The attack was likely a response to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's speech earlier Saturday in which he vowed to fight "until the end" to defend the Syrian regime • Cyber attack by Syrian group on Haifa's water system fails.

A Lebanese policeman stands where a rocket struck an apartment in a building in the Hezbollah stronghold district south of Beirut on Sunday | Photo credit: AP

Two rockets hit a Hezbollah-controlled district in the southern part of the Lebanese capital of Beirut overnight Saturday, residents said, wounding several people in an attack that may have been a response to a speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah earlier in the day.

Nasrallah vowed on Saturday to help propel Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to victory in Syria's bloody civil war, warning that the fall of the Damascus regime would benefit Israel and the West, give rise to extremists and plunge the Middle East into a "dark period."

It was the first attack to apparently target Hezbollah's stronghold in the south of the Lebanese capital since the outbreak of the two-year conflict in neighboring Syria, which has sharply heightened Lebanon's own sectarian tensions.

One of the rockets landed in a car sales yard next to a busy road junction in the Chiah neighborhood and the other hit an apartment several hundred meters away, wounding five people, residents said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility and the army said it was investigating who was behind the attack.

Lebanese security source said three rocket launchers were found, one of which had failed to launch, in the hills to the southeast of the Lebanese capital, about five miles from the area where the two rockets landed.

Hezbollah has come under harsh criticism at home and abroad for sending its gunmen to the Syrian city of Qusair, and Nasrallah's gamble in Syria primarily stems from his group's vested interest in the Assad regime's survival. The Syrian government has been one of Hezbollah's strongest backers for decades and the group fears that if the regime falls it will be replaced by a U.S.-backed government that will be hostile to Hezbollah.

In a televised address to commemorate Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon 13 years ago, Nasrallah defended his group's growing involvement in Syria and sought to frame the fight next door as part of a broader battle against the Jewish state.

"Syria is the backbone of the resistance, and the resistance cannot stand, arms folded, while its back is broken," Nasrallah told thousands of supporters from a secret location via a video link.

"If Syria falls into the hand of America, Israel and takfiris [Muslims accused by other Muslims of apostasy], the resistance [Hezbollah] will be besieged and Israel will enter Lebanon and impose its will," Nasrallah said.

Syria's fall, he said, would mean "Palestine will be lost" and "the people of our region and its nations will enter a bad and dark period."

Nasrallah said the organization was fighting in Syria against Islamic radicals who pose a danger to Lebanon, and said his group would not allow Syrian militants to control areas along the Lebanese border. He pledged that Hezbollah would turn the tide of the conflict in Assad's favor, and stay as long as necessary to do so.

"We will continue on this road until the end, we will take the responsibility and we will make all the sacrifices," he said. "We will be victorious."

The Hezbollah leader's comments offered the clearest public confirmation yet that the Iranian-backed group is directly involved in Syria's war. They also were Nasrallah's first remarks since Hezbollah fighters have pushed to the front lines of the battle for the strategic Syrian town of Qusair near the Lebanese frontier.

The fighting in Qusair, which government troops backed by Hezbollah pounded with artillery on Saturday, has laid bare the Lebanese Shiite group's growing role in the Syrian conflict. Hezbollah initially tried to play down its involvement, but could no longer do so after dozens of its fighters were killed in the town and buried in large funerals in Lebanon.

Nasrallah used his speech in part to brace the community for the possibility of more of its men returning home in coffins.

The fight in Qusair has proven a deadly grind for both sides. On Saturday, government forces backed by Hezbollah militants shelled the town in the heaviest barrage yet of a week-long assault to dislodge rebels from the opposition stronghold, activists said.

Along with Iran, Syria has been the main backer of Hezbollah. Much of the group's arsenal, including tens of thousands of rockets, is believed to have come from Iran via Syria or from Syria itself.

Hezbollah's role has drawn intense criticism from Syria's main opposition group.

"Some Lebanese are being sent to Syria as invaders in order to return back home in coffins draped with shame," said George Sabra, the acting head of the Syrian National Coalition.

Nasrallah said Lebanon should be spared the fighting over Syria's crisis and called upon rivals to go fight in Syria.

"You are fighting in Syria and we are fighting in Syria. Let's fight there. Let's keep Lebanon away from the fighting," Nasrallah said referring to Lebanese Sunni militants who are fighting alongside the Syrian opposition.

Hezbollah is also facing repercussions in Europe over its support for the Syrian military.

Earlier this week, France and Germany joined a push by Britain to have the EU declare Hezbollah's military wing a terrorist organization. Such a move, long sought by the U.S., would hamper Hezbollah operations in Europe.

Nasrallah said the threats by the EU "is all ink on paper" adding that this will not affect the group.

"We have been under pressure for 30 years and it did not affect our morale," he said.

Meanwhile, Syria's fractured political opposition failed Saturday after three days of intense deliberations to reach a decision on whether to attend an international conference brokered by the U.S. and Russia aimed at ending the conflict in Syria.

The U.S. and Russia want to bring together representatives of the opposition and the Syrian government at an international conference in Geneva for talks on a possible transition government. Much remains up in the air, including the date, the agenda and the list of participants.

Meanwhile, an Israeli security expert says Syrian hackers tried to break into the computers of the water system of the city of Haifa, likely in response to air strikes in Damascus which were attributed to Israel by foreign media reports and which targeted a shipment of weapons intended for Hezbollah.

Speaking at a lecture on Saturday in the southern city of Beersheba, Yitzhak Ben Yisrael, Israel's former national cyber security adviser, said a group calling itself the "Syrian Electronic Army" had launched the failed attack two weeks ago.

A Haifa municipal spokesman denied that the city had come under cyber attack. Mayor Yona Yahav said, "We are not aware of a Syrian attack of this kind, but we do know that Haifa, as a symbol of the north, is a strategic target for our enemies." 

Nur Eldan, CEO of Haifa's local water company, said he had only heard of the alleged cyber attack on his company through the media. 

According to the Haifa municipality, Ben Yisrael reiterated that he never claimed the water company was attacked by the Syrian Army, but by the group calling itself the "Syrian Electronic Army," whose affiliations were not yet known and which claimed to have "attacked" targets in Israel's north via the Internet. 

"We have defenses in place against these types of attacks," the Haifa municipality stressed in a press release.

In April, an assault on a wide range of Israeli websites in the name of the hacking group Anonymous mostly failed.

Ilan Gattegno, David Baron, Gadi Golan, Danny Brenner, News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=9509

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