Top al-Qaeda leader dies in Lebanese custody

Majid al-Majid, the alleged leader of an al-Qaeda linked armed group which killed 23 people in a November bomb blast in Beirut has died, just days after he was arrested by the Lebanese troops, state sources said.

Believed to be responsible for a string of attacks across the Middle East and Syria, the Suadi Arabian citizen was being detained at an undisclosed place in Lebanon.

He was one of the 85 most-wanted individuals in his native Saudi Arabia.

The Abdullah Azzam Brigades claimed it carried out the November 19 twin suicide bombings that targeted the Iranian embassy in Beirut. The explosions killed at least 23 people and left more than a hundred injured.

Nearly three years of violence in neighbouring Syria has exacerbated sectarian strife in multi-confessional Lebanon, as politicians sided with rival groups in Syria. Sunni fighters and the Shia group Hezbollah have engaged for months in a tit-for-tat killings, leading to a spate of attacks.

Majid al-Majid, the Saudi "emir" of the al-Qaeda-linked Abdullah Azzam Brigades, had said that attacks would continue in Lebanon until Iranian and Hezbollah forces stopped fighting alongside government forces in Syria.

On Thursday, a car bomb in the Lebanese capital city of Beirut killed at least five people and injured dozens, just days after Majid al-Majid was arrested

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but it came a day after Majid alMajid, the head of a Sunni jihadist group that claimed a suicide bomb attack on the Iranian embassy in Beirut in November, was reportedly arrested.