BEIRUT — A man who is suspected of being behind last week’s gunshot incident outside the US Embassy in northern Beirut has been apprehended by Lebanese security forces. Fortunately, no injuries were reported in the event, as police on Monday declared.
An announcement from the Internal Security Forces verified the arrest of a Lebanese national who was born in a Beirut suburb in 1997. The only way to identify the culprit was by their initials, MK.
According to the authorities, the weapon used in the shooting has been confiscated and the suspect has admitted to carrying it out. The person is being questioned at the moment.
Jake Nelson, a spokesman for the US embassy, thanked local authorities for their swift and exhaustive investigation.
The incident happened late Wednesday night close to the embassy compound’s entrance in Aukar, a Beirut suburb to the north. Though no one or organization took a stand in the occurrence, the reasons for the shooting are still a mystery.
The Lebanese army conducted an inquiry after the shooting that included reviewing security camera footage from the vicinity.
It is important to remember that attacks on Americans have historically occurred in Lebanon. The deadliest of these attacks happened in October 1983 at the U.S. Marine barracks at the Beirut airport when a suicide vehicle bomber crashed into a four-story structure, tragically killing 241 American service personnel.
At least 17 Americans lost their life in a blast that attacked the U.S. Embassy in Beirut on April 18, 1983, in a different attack that took place earlier that year. Among the dead were senior CIA officials, and U.S. authorities laid the blame on the terrorist Lebanese group Hezbollah, which receives support from Iran.
The embassy was moved from central Beirut to the Christian suburb of Aukar, north of the capital of Lebanon, in response to these security concerns.
The embassy was temporarily closed as a result of a suicide bomber targeting the embassy premises in Aukar on September 20, 1984, which claimed the lives of the attacker and 14 other people.
September 1989 saw the withdrawal of all US diplomats from Beirut, and the embassy was not reopened until 1991.
A U.S. Embassy sedan was the target of an explosion in 2008 in northern Beirut, which killed three Lebanese people who were in the vicinity of the car and injured the driver. Additionally injured was an American bystander.
The history of Lebanon also includes the kidnapping and murder of American diplomats, including Ambassador Francis E. Meloy Jr. and his assistant, Robert O. Waring, in 1976, and the kidnapping and murder of William Buckley, the head of the CIA station in Beirut, in 1984 by a group backed by Iran, known as Islamic Jihad.
