Acting Public Prosecutor Judge Jamal Hajjar has assigned Army Intelligence, the Information Division of the Internal Security Forces and State Security to conduct the investigation and collect data about the shooting that targeted the US embassy in Awkar on Wednesday.
As the probe is underway, information is still unclear regarding how the assailant acquired the weapons and could reach the embassy’s vicinity and carry out the operation without being detected.
The attacker’s father, brothers and friends are being questioned and investigated to find out whether he was connected to an underground security cell, Hajjar told our sister company, Houna Loubnan.
The Acting Public Prosecutor, who took over the investigation into the incident, stressed that there is still no definite or clear outcome of the probe.
Nonetheless, Lebanese media reports suggested that “the perpetrator of the American embassy operation is a lone wolf, and did not operate as part of a cell.” They claimed that “he bought weapons and ammunition with his own money and surveyed the American embassy through Google.”
According to Houna Loubnan, Judge Hajjar requested the collection of all surveillance cameras installed on the embassy walls and on buildings in its vicinity to try to identify the direction from which the perpetrator arrived on the scene.
Multiple accounts circulated about the presumed number of gunmen who carried out the gunfire attack. They were all denied by a security source who insisted that the perpetrator is a Syrian national named Qais Farraj, residing in the Beqaa region.
“All information and camera images show that the perpetrator of the operation was one person. He resides with his family in the town of al-Suwairi in the Beqaa, and had travelled to Beirut in a public bus,” the source told Houna Louban.
“The assailant was then transported by taxi to Awkar. He got out of the car a few hundred meters from the embassy, went on foot into the woods, where he took out the machine gun and quiver, then approached the embassy fence and began shooting,” the source added.
The shooting went on for 15 minutes before the assailant was gunned down by the Lebanese Army. He was wounded and taken to the hospital.
“He was able to hit the embassy wall, the visitors’ entrance, and the gate designated for cars, with dozens of bullets,” the source pointed out.
Following the attack, the army raided the town of al-Suwairi, arresting Farraj’s brother for interrogation, and a cleric, Sheikh Malik Juha, the imam of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq Mosque in Majdal Anjar, who gave Farraj religious teachings.
