Damascus bombing suspect throws himself from roof during Hezbollah raid

BEIRUT — A man allegedly threw himself from a seventh-floor roof south of Beirut Friday night during a Hezbollah raid, a party spokeswoman told L’Orient Today Saturday. The man subsequently died in hospital.

Wissam Dalla, a Syrian national in his early twenties, “threw himself from the seventh floor” of a building Hay al-Sellom, where he had been staying with relatives “after learning his location had been discovered,” Hezbollah said to AFP.

The party’s security apparatus suspected the man of being responsible for a bombing at the Sayyida Zeinab neighborhood, south of Damascus on July 27. They conducted raids in Beirut’s southern suburbs after receiving information that the perpetrator had been smuggled into Lebanon.

“We were worried that he would also attempt to cause a security incident in Lebanon so we conducted the raids,” Hezbollah spokeswoman explained.

An anonymous source at the Lebanese Army, who is forbidden from talking to the media, told L’Orient Today that they had not been informed of the operation, which was conducted by Hezbollah alone.

Six people were killed and several more injured in the Sayyida Zeinab blast committed ahead of Ashoura commemorations. The Islamic State group later claimed responsibility for the attack.

Shiite shrines are a frequent target of attacks by Sunni Muslim extremists, not only in Syria but also in neighboring Iraq.

Syrian authorities had tightened security measures around the mausoleum for the 10-day Ashura commemoration.

Two days earlier, an explosion in a car in the same area wounded two civilians, official media had cited a security official as saying.

Hezbollah is the only Lebanese faction that kept its weapons after the end of the 1975-1990 civil war. It is considered a "terrorist" organisation by many Western governments.

Hezbollah has been fighting on the side of President Bashar al-Assad in the country's civil war that erupted in 2011.

Beirut's southern suburbs saw a wave of bombings between 2013 and 2015 carried out by Sunni extremists in retaliation for the Shiite group's intervention in the Syria conflict.