Dearborn Couple Killed in Lebanon Bombings

The members do not appear to have been a target in the attack and were in “the wrong place at the wrong time”, the source said.

In a purported ISIS statement circulated on social media, the terror group claimed responsibility for the blasts.

Lebanon officials have announced 11 arrests in Beirut over the weekend, all in connection with last Thursday’s terrorist attacks, which resulted in the deaths of 44 people, reported Yahoo!

One day later while Paris is locked down, Beirut is still trying to come to grasps with its own massacre.

Indeed, had the victims been more “like us” than the otherised, eerie- and criminal-sounding inhabitants of Beirut’s southern suburbs where the bombings occurred – incessantly described by the sheeplike media as a “Hezbollah stronghold” or “Hezbollah bastion” – they’d have stood a much greater chance of breaking our hearts.

In its defence, you could argue that Western media is simply catering to the interests of Western readers – who are far more likely to have visited Paris than Beirut – and that Lebanon has been a war zone for much of the past 40 years, so what difference is one more bombing?

The incident passed by with cursory mention.

The company introduced the feature shortly after the coordinated attacks across Paris late on Friday, which left at least 129 people dead.

This is not only about Paris and Beirut.

“Lots of Syrians got killed and hurt because they were out using their UNICEF ration cards to buy food”, said 57-year-old Peter Sheim, an electrical engineer and Canadian citizen who lived for 24 years in Gatineau, Que., before returning to Lebanon four years ago. When my people died, they did not send the world into mourning. The Empire State Building and Sydney Opera House were lit in the colors of the French flag.

Indeed, Australian political leaders lined up to tweet about Paris but very few did the same about Beirut.

The situation in Iraq is also obviously more complicated – not to mention the ones in Afghanistan, Yemen, and other locations on the receiving end of USA military atrocities.

Middle East analyst Rami Khouri, who is based in Beirut, said the recent surge in violence in Lebanon is part of larger, regional turmoil.

However, Ms Kattan questioned whether projecting the Lebanese flag onto the Opera House was the answer. But under a street light i could see that it was a ball-bearing. The following day, a suicide blast and a roadside bomb killed 26 in Baghdad.

“Until yesterday, our policy was only to activate safety check for natural disasters”.

Indian blogger Karuna Ezara Parikh wrote a poem that’s gone viral since the Paris attacks. However, the plan was changed due to heavy security presence.

Al Jazeera contacted Facebook to ask why the option to add flags to profile pictures had not been offered for previous attacks in other countries, but had not received a response at the time of publication.

The selective nature of highlighting one nation and one group’s suffering above another doesn’t impress Ms Kattan. “We need to be coming up with symbols that are inclusive and not exclusive”.