Lebanon arrests Tripoli bombing suspect

Lebanese security forces arrested a suspect on Saturday in connection to twin bombings that killed at least 47 people in Tripoli on Friday, the state news agency said. The coordinated attacks on two mosques in the northern city were the worst on Lebanese soil since its 1975-1990 civil war. The National News Agency said the suspect, Sheik Ahmad al-Ghareeb, appeared in surveillance footage at the site of one of the explosions. Police took him into custody at his home in the Miniyeh region outside Tripoli, it said. Al-Ghareeb  is linked to a Sunni organisation that has good relations with Lebanon's powerful Shiite Hezbollah militant group, the agency added. Coming a week after a deadly blast that hit the Beirut bastion of Shiite movement Hezbollah, the latest bombings risk further stoking tensions between supporters and foes of the Syrian government. The blasts hit during weekly Muslim prayers, in a city where Sunni supporters of Syria's rebels engage in often deadly clashes with members of the Alawite offshoot of Islam who back Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The first bomb struck in the city centre at the Al-Salam mosque as worshippers were still inside. The second explosion struck minutes later outside Al-Taqwa mosque, about two kilometres (a little more than a mile) away, near the port. The Lebanese Red Cross said at least 500 people were wounded, of whom 280 were still in hospital. Additional source: AFP