A man blew himself up in a Beirut hotel today as security forces stormed his room, killing himself and wounding 10 other people, a senior Lebanese official said.
An accomplice of the suicide bomber who was also in the room survived the blast, the official said.
"When the security forces entered their hotel room, they blew themselves up by detonating the explosives beside them. One died and the other is wounded," the official said.
Interior Minister Nuhad Mashnuq, who visited the scene of the bombing, said the wounded bomber was a Saudi and was in custody.
Three of the other wounded were security personnel, military prosecutor Sakr Sakr said. Seven more were civilians, the Lebanese Red Cross said.
The police raid followed the arrest last Friday in a hotel in the nearby Hamra district of the capital of a Frenchman of Comoran origin on suspicion of plotting to carry out suicide bombings in Lebanon on behalf of the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group.
That is the same group that has spearheaded the offensive by Sunni Arab militants that has swept up a big swathe of northern and north-central Iraq over the past two weeks and also made gains in neighbouring Syria.
On Monday, the Al-Akbar newspaper reported that investigators suspected the detained Frenchman was part of a cell of four would-be suicide bombers who had entered Lebanon.
The same night, a young police inspector was killed as he stopped a car driving the wrong way up a street towards a cafe in the Shiyah district of south Beirut whose driver then blew it up.
The bomber also wounded 12 other people.
