prevent massacre in Beirut

beirut - Lebanese security forces have prevented a major terrorist attack in the capital Beirut. They arrested Saturday night at a packed restaurant a man before he could ignite an explosive belt. ' A massacre 'was thereby prevented, said the Lebanese president Michel Aoun Sunday against the state news agency NNA.

The prisoner would be an eighteen-year-old Lebanese. He was arrested in the entertainment district of al-Hamra. About his background were no further details are known.

In recent years there have been several attacks in Beirut that were associated with the civil war in neighboring Syria. In November 2015 fell more than forty deaths in a series of explosions in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood. Sunni terror group Islamic State claimed the responsibility for it.