(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Lebanon on Friday mourned 43 people killed in south Beirut in a twin bombing claimed by the Islamic State group, the bloodiest such attack in years.
The Red Cross said at least 239 people were also wounded, several in critical condition, in the blasts that hit a busy shopping street in the Burj al-Barajneh neighborhood, where the Shia Hezbollah movement is popular.
The attack harked back to a campaign against the group between 2013 and 2014, ostensibly in revenge for its military support of regime forces in neighboring Syria's civil war.
But it was the largest attack ever claimed by IS in Lebanon, and among the deadliest bombings to hit the country since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.
On Friday, families prepared to collect the bodies of loved ones from hospitals as the country observed a day of national mourning declared by Prime Minister Tammam Salam.
Schools were closed for the day, and politicians across Lebanon's fractured political spectrum offered condemnations of the attack.
The blasts ripped through a street market in the poor neighborhood, staining the ground red with blood and gutting several surrounding shops.
The army said the attack was carried out by two suicide bombers, and that the body of a third who failed to detonate his explosive device was found at the scene of the second blast.
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