December 06-2013
Lebanese investigators say they have tentatively identified the two suicide bombers who died trying to attack the Iranian embassy last week as Palestinians living in Lebanon.
The death toll was also raised to 25 as two more bodies were found in the rubble. Only two of the dead were Iranians—cultural attache Ebrahim Ansari, a cleric who was buried last week in Qom, and the unnamed wife of an embassy staffer, who was killed in the family apartment across the street from the embassy.
The Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, Qazanfar Roknabadi, said no one inside the embassy was injured. The embassy is set far back in its compound and suffered no damage beyond broken windows. The ambassador said he and the cultural attache were about to leave the compound by car for an appointment. The cultural attache was outside the embassy with the car. The ambassador was inside the building and just about to depart when the bombs went off.
The two bombers were identified as Adnan Musa al-Moham-mad and Moin Abu Daher, both living in Sidon. Al-Mohammad’s mother, Fatima, told a local television station she had not seen her son since June. She described her son as an observant Muslim but a “stubborn kid. She said, “I did not expect him to do this. He killed innocent civilians and Islam does not permit this.”
The Daily Star of Beirut reported that security cameras revealed that the bombers had stayed in the Sheraton Four Seasons, a luxury hotel, before their final mission.
The Islamic Republic has officially blamed Israel for the attack, although few believe that. A Sunni group allied with Al-Qaeda, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, has claimed responsibility.
Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani strayed from the official line last week. In a speech to the Majlis, he blamed “takfiris,” used in Iran to refer to Sunnis who view Shiism as apostasy.
Iran’s news agencies have spent much of the week sending out stories on each individual country that has condemned the bombing, as if that signaled some special recognition of the Islamic Republic and its importance. However, PressTV, the English-language arm of state broadcasting, still has not corrected its erroneous story saying the United States had refused to condemn the bombing.