The debris-strewn, bloodstained street outside the Iranian Embassy in Beirut lay as mute testimony of another dark day in Lebanon on Tuesday, when nearly two dozen people were killed in a double suicide bombing, the latest in a string of sectarian attacks to blight the country.
The first bomber, on a motorcycle, blew up at a checkpoint just yards from the embassy in the Bir Hasan area of the capital, according to security officials and the army. The blast drew residents out onto the street or to their balconies, exposing them to the more powerful car-bomb explosion that came minutes later.
By day's end, the death toll from the twin suicide bombing stood at 23, with 147 people injured, according to the Health Ministry. Iran's state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) confirmed that the country's cultural attache, Ibrahim Ansari, was among the dead.