BEIRUT — When Syria deployed thousands of soldiers along its frontier with northern Lebanon this month, some here feared that the Syrians were preparing to retake a country their military had dominated until it was pushed out in 2005.
But now, after a bombing Saturday that was the deadliest in Syria since 1986, analysts are wondering whether the troops were defensive, meant to stop an imminent attack from Lebanon-based Sunni Muslim militants inspired by Al Qaeda and sometimes trained in Iraq.
"The handwriting has been on the wall for a while," Sami Moubayed, a political analyst in Damascus, the Syrian capital, said Sunday. "There have been signs of trouble coming in from Iraq or Lebanon."
The car bombing killed 17 people and injured 14 in a crowded residential neighborhood on the outskirts of Damascus. The area is near an intelligence office and along the route to an important Shiite Muslim shrine.
It came as Syria performs delicate balancing acts in navigating the region's sectarian and political fault lines.
The Syrians have held peace talks with Israel while strengthening ties to Iran, the Jewish state's greatest enemy. They are trying to improve relations with the West and maintain what some describe as heavy influence in Lebanon, contrary to the demands of the United States and France.
Recently, Syria's Shiite-dominated allies in Lebanon won several political victories, angering Sunni militants who consider the secular government of Syrian President Bashar Assad an enemy.
Northern Lebanon has long been a bastion for Sunni radicals, some of them veterans of the Iraq insurgency. Fatah al Islam, a group with Al Qaeda ties, fought the Lebanese army last year in a months-long battle that left hundreds dead.
On Aug. 13, just hours before newly selected Lebanese President Michel Suleiman paid a landmark visit to Damascus, a roadside bomb struck a bus in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, killing at least 12 people, 10 of them soldiers of the Lebanese army, which is widely perceived as sympathetic to Syria. Dozens have died in clashes between Sunnis and Lebanon's Alawite sect, which also has strong ties to Syria.
Lebanese scholar Ahmad Moussalli said he told several Syrian officials over lunch in Damascus three weeks ago to expect an attack on their soil. Saturday's bombing, he said, was unsurprising.
