A weekend of Islamist inspired violence

Mourners buried former Lebanese Minister Mohamad Chatah today after his murder by Hezbollah supporters on Friday. The unease that this has provoked was summarised in this Reuters report:

Friday's attack on Chatah, a Sunni who was a vocal critic of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Lebanese ally Hezbollah, has once again stoked sectarian enmities exacerbated by the spillover of Syria's conflict......

The killing also carried particular symbolism three weeks before a Western-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon, based in The Hague, begins the trial in absentia of five Hezbollah suspects accused of killing Rafik al-Hariri. Both Hezbollah and Syria denied accusations made in a U.N. investigation that they were behind the assassination.

The site of the bombing in which Chatah died, a part of the city rebuilt by Hariri after Lebanon's war, was itself meant to send a message, analyst Rami Khouri said.

"People will see this as a sign this violence can now happen in the heart of Hariri land just like it was happening in the heart of Hezbollah land before," he said. "Any target is now permissible in any part of the country.

Even as this funeral for another untimely death took place, there was yet another suicide bombing in Volgograd (Stalingrad) this afternoon. Already 18 innocent civilians have been declared dead after a woman terrorist blew herself up at the main railway station. The New York Times reports:

The blast, captured on a surveillance video camera from across the central plaza in front of the station, occurred near the metal detectors that have become a common security fixture at most of Russia’s transportation hubs, suggesting that an attack deeper inside the station or aboard a train might have been averted.

Vladimir I. Markin, a spokesman for the Investigative Committee, called the bombing an act of terrorism, though the exact motivation, target and perpetrator were not immediately clear. Within hours of the attack, the authorities blamed a suicide bomber, citing the gruesome discovery of a woman’s severed head, which, they said, could aid in identifying her.

“Most likely, the victims could have been much higher if the so-called protective system had not stopped the suicide bomber from getting through the metal detectors into the waiting room where there were passengers,” Mr. Markin said in a statement on the committee’s website.

It was the second such attack in Volgograd in two months. In October a woman identified as Naida Asiyalova detonated a vest of explosives aboard a bus in the city, killing herself and six others.

Meanwhile in Egypt supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood have been attacking universities in a concerted attempt to stop students taking exams. Reuters reports:

State-run newspaper Al-Ahram said security forces fired teargas to disperse pro-Brotherhood students who were preventing their classmates from entering university buildings to take exams.

It didn't end there though as CNN reported earlier today:

Fresh violence rocked Egypt on Sunday when an explosion wounded four people near military intelligence offices in the Nile Delta, state-run Nile TV reported.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The chaos came a day after Egyptian student protesters who support the Muslim Brotherhood were accused of torching the cafeteria of a Cairo university, state media reported.

Not to be left out, an unnamed group of Jihadists attacked Northern Israel today hoping to provoke further conflict to distract Hezbollah from its' role in supporting Assad in Syria. The Washington Post takes up the story:

Five rockets were fired from southern Lebanon toward Israel Sunday morning, with at least one landing several miles from a border town in Israel’s north. No injuries or serious damage was reported......

The Shiite political and militant group Hezbollah, whose armed wing earlier this year was branded a terrorist organization by the European Union, has its stronghold in southern Lebanon.

An Israeli military spokesman said the five missiles appeared to be 122-mm Russian-made Katyushas, most likely supplied by Iran.

Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyau reminded observers that:

“What is happening in Lebanon is that Hezbollah is stationing thousands of missiles and rockets in apartments, in the heart of the civilian population, and is thus perpetrating two war crimes simultaneously,” the prime minister said. “It is organizing the firing at civilians, just as it did today, and it is hiding behind civilians as human shields.”

Hamas does the same in Gaza, not that this bothers their appeasers on the left. But then as we can see on a daily basis the Islamists do not respect life. 

The terrorists and their supporters must be opposed wherever they appear.