Lebanon Blast Near Syrian Border Rocks Village

Lebanon on Sunday suffered another large warehouse explosion, five months after the mammoth blast in Beirut that killed hundreds. The latest incident was much smaller in scale, injuring at least 10 people in the eastern Hermel region bordering Syria. According to rescuers and army officials who were dispatched to the blast site, a warehouse housing gas canisters exploded for a yet unknown reason and subsequently caught on fire. All of those wounded were rushed to local hospitals. The village where the blast occurred and the surrounding area near the Lebanese-Syrian border have been hotbeds for smugglers who have for the past decade transferred people, contraband and weapons in and out of war-torn Syria. The operation is headed by the Iran-backed Hizbullah group in control of Lebanon, which is deemed a terror organization by the United States, Israel and the European Union. In August, an explosion in an ammonium nitrate storage house rocked the capital of Beirut, killing more than 200 people, wounding over 6,500 and displacing 300,000.