The Lebanese government has warned of a heightened terrorist threat after eight suicide bombers attacked a Christian village on the border with Syria, in the latest spillover of its conflict into Lebanon.

The village of al-Qaa was targeted on Monday in two waves of suicide attacks that killed five people. The first group of bombers attacked before dawn and the second later at night, two of them blowing themselves up near a church.

Security officials believe Islamic State militants were behind the attack. There has been no claim of responsibility.

In reference to the number of assailants, the Lebanese government said the attack and the unfamiliar way it was carried out represented a new phase of “confrontation between the Lebanese state and evil terrorism”.

The prime minister, Tammam Salam, “expressed his fear that what happened in Qaa is the start of a new wave of terrorist operations in different areas of Lebanon”, the information minister, Ramzi Jreij, said in televised comments after a cabinet meeting.

Sunni Islamist militants have struck repeatedly in Lebanon since the eruption of the war in neighbouring Syria, where the powerful Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah is fighting in support of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.

The interior minister, Nohad Machnouk, speaking from al-Qaa, said most of the attackers had come from inside Syria, not refugee camps in Lebanon hosting Syrian refugees who number well over 1 million.

Local authorities had imposed curfews on Syrian refugees in the area following the attacks.



