Beirut - Members of a terrorist cell who were detained in
northern Lebanon over the weekend had planned to assassinate the
newly appointed Army Chief Jean Qahwaji, a Lebanese security official
said Tuesday.
The Lebanese army said on Sunday that its troops have arrested
members of a terrorist group allegedly involved in recent bombings in
northern Lebanon.
Sunday's army statement said several people from a 'terrorist
cell' were arrested for their involvement in the August 13 and
September 29 bombings in the port city of Tripoli that killed 21
people among them Lebanese soldiers.
The pan-Arab Al Hayat newspaper said, citing security sources,
that the cell members admitted to planning an attack on the Internal
Security Forces (ISF) headquarters in Beirut's Ashrafiyeh district.
They also said, according to al-Hayat, that they had planted
explosives on the highway leading to the headquarters of the Tenth
Brigade at the military base in the Qleiat military airport.
According to a Lebanese security source they also planned an
attack on Qahwaji's convoy.
'Qahawji was the head of the tenth brigade when the Lebanese army
fought pitched battles against the fundamentalist movement Fatah al-
Islam in Tripoli northern Lebanon,' the source told Deutsche Presse-
Agentur dpa.
Lebanese security sources said the 'terrorist who were arrested
over the weekend belong to Fatah al-Islam.'
Last year, the army fought a 15-week battle with the al-Qaeda
inspired Fatah al-Islam in the northern refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared
that left 400 people dead, including 168 soldiers.
Al-Hayat added that Abdul Ghani Jawhar, the terrorist cell leader
who is still at large, was spotted at the site of the attack in
Tripoli minutes before the September 29 bus blast which killed four
soldiers and three civilians.
A similar attack on August 13 killed 14 people, including nine
soldiers and a child.
Jawhar had bought 50 kilograms of explosives from the Palestinian
Refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh in southern Lebanon and transported
them to al-Baddawi camp, according to Al-Hayat newspaper.
Two wanted Fatah al-Islam members identified as Ousama al-Shehabi
and Mohammed Awad reportedly bought the explosives from the same camp
and used them for the second Tripoli bombing.
Meanwhile, the spokesman of the mainstream Fatah movement in the
Palestinian Refugee camp of Rashidiyeh east of southern port city of
Tyre, Sultan Abu al-Aynayn, said that Lebanese Army Commander Jean
Qahwaji had assigned specific security agencies to coordinate with
the Palestinian factions on all security issues in the refugee camps.
Abu al-Aynayn said the Palestinian factions would firmly deal with
any security breach that will threaten the security in Lebanon.
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