Suicide Car Bomber Kills 2, Wounds 2 in S. Lebanon

A young suicide bomber drove a car packed with explosives near an Israeli patrol in southern Lebanon on Wednesday and detonated it, killing himself and a passing villager and wounding two Israeli soldiers, the military reported.

It was the fourth such attack in two months.

An Israeli military spokesman said the vehicle blew up near an Israeli army unit on an anti-guerrilla patrol inside Israel’s self-declared security zone about three miles north of the border.

A 12-year-old boy said the driver was chatting with him from the idling white Mercedes when the patrol pulled into Anoun, and that he told him to run for cover as he gunned the engine, then drove toward the patrol.

In Sidon, a pro-Syrian political party claimed responsibility for the attack and said the car bomb killed more than 25 Israeli soldiers.

High Figures Rejected

But Lebanese security sources joined Israel in rejecting those figures, reporting that, besides the suicide bomber, a Lebanese was killed and three people wounded.

Three other car bombs driven by suicide attackers have killed scores of Lebanese and four pro-Israeli militiamen on the edge of the zone since it was set up by Israeli troops completing a formal withdrawal from Lebanon on June 10.

Israeli state radio said the car apparently was driven by a 13-year-old boy.

But the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, an extremist group, claimed responsibility and named the driver as Ali Ghazi Taleb, 22, a student from northern Lebanon.

The group claimed that more than 25 Israeli soldiers were killed when he rammed his car into an Israeli convoy.

The political faction advocates creation of a “greater Syria” combining Syria with pre-1948 Palestine, which is now Israel, and Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait and Cyprus. The faction is allied with the Syrian government of President Hafez Assad.