Two car bombings have recently ripped through the Hezbollah-dominated Dahiyeh district of southern Beirut, months after Sunni rebels in Syria began threatening to retaliate against the Iran-backed terror group for providing troops to the Bashar al-Assad regime.

Lebanese officials had become increasingly vocal in demanding that Hezbollah untangle itself and Lebanon from the Syrian war. A top Lebanese official recently accused the group of plunging the country “into fire.”

Instead Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has vowed to double Hezbollah’s commitment to the Bashar al-Assad regime, courting further blowback.

To deal with the potential retaliation, Hezbollah is militarizing its strongholds in southern Beirut:

Streets leading into powerful Hezbollah’s stronghold in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital have been cordoned off, as guards in civilian clothes search a long line of cars. The Shiite militant group was already accused of running a “state-within-a-state,” but two car bombings in the area in as many months have spurred Hezbollah to turn the suburbs into a fortress…

Others wear uniform, carry walkie-talkies and are members of the Hezbollah-run “Union of Municipalities of the Southern Suburbs”. They also stop and ask for the IDs of bikers entering the densely populated neighbourhood.

[Photo: Euronews / YouTube]