THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

If you are battling another group and your religious differences are prominent between you, where is the best place to attack lots of the other guys in one place? Why, where they worship, of course. And we are seeing the spread in the Middle East of a favorite tactic of those with no restraint, attacking the mosque. The latest location is in Lebanon.

Car bombs exploded with catastrophic force outside two Sunni mosques in this northern Lebanon city on Friday as many worshipers were leaving prayers, killing dozens of people and wounding hundreds in a major escalation of sectarian violence in a country deeply unsettled by the conflict in neighboring Syria...

The blasts hit the Taqwa and Al-Salam mosques, which are on opposite sides of the city, at around 1:38 p.m. The Lebanese Red Cross said at least 29 people were killed and more than 500 wounded. Reuters said at least 42 people were killed.

The first car bomb hit about 50 yards from the gates of the Taqwa mosque, setting dozens of cars and a nearby building alight and shattering the windows of surrounding buildings. The blast snapped the trunks of palm trees and left a crater in the street that punctured a water main, flooding the street. On the roof of the mosque’s entryways sat the carcass of blown up car that people nearby at the time said was the bomb car, hurtled into the air by the blast.

The second blast near the al-Salam mosque blasted a six-foot-deep hole in the asphalt and shattered the windows of apartments towers down the block.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the blasts, but the Taqwa mosque was where Sheik Salem al-Rafei, an outspoken Sunni preacher, had inveighed against Hezbollah, the militant Shiite group that supports Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. The preacher also had exhorted worshipers to support the Sunni insurgency trying to topple Mr. Assad.

And Lebanon still can not get out from under the shadow of Syria.