Five employees slightly injured, one still in hospital; bomb attack is latest on shop, club selling alcohol.
By REUTERSLebanese soldiers at bombed Tyre restaurant_370(photo credit: Haidar Hawila/Reuters)
TYRE, Lebanon - Five people were injured and a building was damaged when a bomb exploded in a restaurant in the south Lebanon coastal town of Tyre early on Monday, a Lebanese security source said.There has been a spate of bombings in majority-Muslim Tyre in the last few months of clubs, shops and restaurants that sell alcohol, whose consumption is forbidden by Islam, and several restaurants have stopped serving alcohol as a result.The latest bomb detonated shortly after midnight in the Nocean, a restaurant serving alcohol, on the third storey of a commercial complex in the east of the city, shattering the windows of nearby cars."Five employees were injured, but only lightly," the source said, adding that four of them were discharged from hospital on Monday morning.Lebanese security forces cordoned off the area, where large chunks of concrete had fallen onto the streets."I was on my way to the restaurant in my car, talking on the phone. I heard an explosion and then something fell on the car," Nocean owner Zahi Zaydan told Reuters.Two bombs detonated in a nightclub and a liquor shop in Tyre in November, and a restaurant selling alcohol was targeted in December. The majority of Tyre residents are Shi'ite Muslims but members of Lebanon's Christian and Sunni Muslim communities also live in the city.
