Beirut blasts aimed to sow discord: Hezbollah official

An official from the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah says the recent bomb attacks in Beirut are aimed at destabilizing Lebanon and dividing its people.

“I believe what we have here is a criminal attempt to destabilize the situation in Lebanon,” the head of Hezbollah Media Office, Ibrahim Moussawi, said in an exclusive interview with Press TV on Wednesday.

“This is an attempt to ignite the fuel of fitna (sedition) and discord and to [drive] a wedge among the Lebanese, especially among the Shias and the Sunnis,” Moussawi stated.

He dismissed allegations by the al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group al-Nusra Front, which claimed responsibility for Tuesday twin bombing as retaliation for an attack it alleged Hezbollah had launched in Syria.

He argued that the Takfiri militants had been launching terrorist attacks against Lebanese civilians long before Hezbollah’s presence in Syria.

Moussawi called on the Lebanese people and leaders of the country’s sects to maintain solidarity against divisive schemes and help the country through the political standoff it has been facing.

A large number of people have lost their lives in terrorist attacks that have stricken the Lebanese capital repeatedly in recent months.

At least four people were killed on Tuesday when two car bomb blasts hit a busy commercial street in Beirut’s southern neighborhood of Haret Hriek, which is considered as a stronghold of Hezbollah.

On January 2, the neighborhood was targeted by a similar bombing by the al-Qaeda-linked militants of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

On December 27, 2013, several people, including former Lebanese finance minister, Mohamad Shatah, were killed in a car bomb attack near the parliament in Beirut.