Iranian cultural attache killed in Beirut blasts

Two explosions, at least one caused by a suicide bomber, rocked Iran's embassy in Lebanon today, killing at least 23 people, including an Iranian cultural attache, and hurling bodies, cars and debris across the street.

A Lebanese-based al Qaeda-linked group known as the Abdullah Azzam Brigades claimed responsibility for what it described as a double suicide attack on the Iranian mission in southern

Beirut. Lebanon has suffered a series of bomb attacks and clashes linked to the two and a half year conflict in neighbouring Syria.

Security camera footage showed a man in an explosives belt rushing towards the outer wall of the embassy before blowing himself up, Lebanese officials said.

They said the second explosion was caused by a car bomb parked two buildings away from the compound.

In a Twitter post, Sheikh Sirajeddine Zuraiqat, the religious guide of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, said the group had carried out the attack.

“It was a double martyrdom operation by two of the Sunni heroes of Lebanon,” he wrote.

Shia Iran actively supports Syrian president Bashar al-Assad against Sunni Muslim rebels, who are backed and armed by Sunni powers Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Syrian rebel groups, some linked to al Qaeda, have threatened to take their battle from Syria to Lebanon in response to the military involvement of Iran and its Lebanese Shia guerrilla ally Hezbollah alongside Assad's forces.

Iran’s ambassador Ghazanfar Roknabadi said it was clear the attacks targeted his embassy and identified one of the dead as Ebrahim Ansari, a cultural attache who was on his way to work at the diplomatic compound when the bombs exploded.

Lebanon’s health minister Ali Hassan Khalil said 23 people had been killed and 146 wounded.

The attack followed car bombings in Sunni and Shia Muslim strongholds in Beirut and the northern city of Tripoli in August, in which a total of at least 66 people were killed.

"Agencies