The al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist group Nusra Front took responsibility for the attacks, which targeted members of the Alawite sect. It was the first suicide attack on a civilian neighbourhood in nearly a year, following a security sweep that temporarily calmed the Bab al-Tabbaneh–Jabal Mohsen conflict between Sunnis and Alawites of Tripoli. Nusra claimed the attack was in revenge for the Syrian government's attacks on Sunnis in the Syrian civil war, and for a bombing of Sunni mosques that was blamed on Alawites.[5] The interior minister of Lebanon, Nohad Machnouk, said on January 11 that the attack was carried out by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.[6]