Suicide Driver’s Car Blows Up Near Israelis
A suicide bomber drove a car rigged with explosives toward scores of Israeli troops in south Lebanon today but it exploded just before reaching them, security sources said.
They said the driver planned to smash the Renault car packed with 220 pounds of explosives into an Israeli convoy near Khardali Bridge, 6 miles south of Marjayoun in Israel’s self-declared “security zone.”
It was not immediately known what triggered the explosion, which killed only the driver, the sources said.
Israeli troops sealed off the area, 2 miles from their northern border and 300 yards from a post manned by U.N. peacekeeping troops, the sources said.
‘Heroic ... Mission’
Pro-Iranian Muslim fighters said in a statement issued in Beirut that the attack was successful. They said one of their fighters launched a “heroic suicidal mission” that killed or wounded several Israeli soldiers.
The Islamic Resistance, a coalition of fundamentalist Muslims including the Iranian-backed Hezbollah (Party of God), said that the shattered bodies of soldiers littered the area and that Israeli helicopters and ambulances rushed the wounded to hospitals inside Israel.
The attack was the first since 1986 when several suicide car bomb attacks were made on Israeli troops and their local allies.
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