Lebanon Foreign Ministry, officials denounce Damascus bus blast

Lebanese officials condemned Monday the bombing that killed six Lebanese pilgrims and wounded about 20 in Damascus one day earlier. Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry described the attack as “terrorist,” and “cowardly.”

Minister Gebran Bassil telephoned the families of the victims to offer his condolences, a statement by the ministry said, a day after a bomb ripped through a bus carrying 52 Lebanese Shiite pilgrims visiting holy sites in Damascus Sunday. A Twitter account associated with the Nusra Front claimed responsibility for the attack.

The March 14 secretariat also condemned the attack in a statement Monday. “[We offer] the warmest condolences to the families of the victims of the terrorist attack on a Lebanese bus in Damascus yesterday,” the statement said.

It said that Hezbollah was in part to blame for the bombing because of its role in the Syrian conflict. Grand Mufti Abdel-Latif Derian condemned the bombing as an “immoral, inhuman, asocial and non-religious act.” “We strongly condemn this behavior … and the party behind it,” he told reporters Monday.

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt commented on the attack in his weekly column for his party’s Al-Anbaa magazine. “We condemn the terrorist attack that targeted the Lebanese pilgrims in the Syrian capital, and we believe that any targeting of innocent civilians by bombings and murder is condemned on all standards,” Jumblatt said.

But on Twitter account, he also denounced what he described as “the terrorism of the [Syrian] regime.” Jumblatt had previously sparked outrage by making comments describing the Nusra Front as a non-terrorist organization.