Last update - 00:00 14/10/2006
Four Lebanese people hurt as grenade explodes in Beirut
By The Associated Press
At least one grenade exploded at a downtown Beirut square early Sunday, wounding four people, police said.
The grenade was fired from a rifle toward Riad Solh Square in central Beirut and hit a building, the police said.
The explosion broke some windows in the building and damaged two cars, witnesses said. Police and army troops ringed the area and an investigation was under way. The four wounded, who are all believed to civilians, were taken to a hospital for treatment.
Two were released from hospital shortly afterward, but a couple remained for treatment, hospital staff said. Among them were two who were waiting on a sidewalk for the valet to pick up their car.
Some witnesses said more than one grenade was launched but that could not be confirmed.
It could not be immediately determined who was behind the attack and whether it was politically motivated.
Dance clubs are located in the building that was hit. Located on the same square are the heavily fortified buildings housing UN offices and an adjacent building housing international and Arab media offices.
The prime minister's office is about 100 meters away overlooking the square and the Parliament building is on another square a few buildings behind Riad Solh.
The area is busy with Gulf Arab tourists, some of whom have started returning to Lebanon after the end of the Israel-Hezbollah summer fighting.
Earlier this month, two bombs were thrown at two police stations causing minor damage but no injuries. An investigation is ongoing to determine whether those attacks were related to a clash between police and rioters several days earlier in which two boys were killed by gunfire, or if it was a renewal of a bombing campaign that shook the capital and outlying areas last year, targeting businesses and anti-Syrian politicians
On Saturday, a Lebanese man was killed Saturday by a stray bullet at the Ein el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in south Lebanon, security officials said.
A scuffle between rival factions in the camp - the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Jund al-Sham, an Islamic group backed by Syria - escalated into a shootout, the officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak to the media.
Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a 25-year-old Lebanese man with no ties to either group, was severely wounded by a stray bullet, they said. He died later at a hospital, they added.
Ein el-Hilweh, with a population of 75,000, is the largest of Lebanon's 12 Palestinian refugee camps. Nearly all Palestinian guerrilla groups have offices in the camp, where clashes and vendetta killings are frequent.