Arab hero's tale airs at last

The suicide bombers' attack during rush hour in Lebanon's capital killed 45 and injured 200 more. Photo / AP

Father’s tackle of Beirut bomber has been ignored because of his ethnicity, says blogger.

A father, with his young daughter watching, sacrificed himself to save others when Isis terrorists struck Beirut last week.

The day before the horrific massacre in central Paris left the world reeling, two attacks during rush hour in Lebanon's capital city killed 45 and wounded more than 200 others.

They were claimed by Isis (Islamic State).

If not for the heroic actions of one man, the death toll would have been much higher. And now, days later, his heroism is being recognised.

Adel Termos, 32, was walking in an open-air market with his daughter in a Hizbollah area of the city, according to reports, when the first suicide bomber detonated his explosives.

Amid the instant chaos, Termos spotted the second bomber preparing to blow himself up, and made the quick decision to tackle him to the ground. The bomb went off, killing Termos, but saving countless others, including his daughter.

"There are many families, hundreds probably, who owe their completeness to his sacrifice," Elie Fares, a blogger and physician in Beirut, told Public Radio International last week.

"To make that kind of decision in a split second, to decide that you'd rather save hundreds than to go back home to your family is something that I think no one will ever understand," Fares told the Washington Post on Tuesday.

Fares had immediately shared Termos' story, and it was covered by local media there, but it went largely unnoticed by the international community, especially as news of the Paris attacks quickly consumed the news cycle.

But in Lebanon, Termos was instantly famous, memorialised in Facebook posts and conversations, Fares told PRI last week.

After the Friday attacks, Fares, on his own blog, wrote about Termos: "Tonight, Adel is no longer of this world, but his legacy will live on for years: Adel is the reason we are not talking about fatalities in the three digits today, he is the reason some families still have their sons, daughters, fathers and mothers, he is a Lebanese hero whose name should be front and centre in every single outlet."

Then Fares gained attention, and by extension attention for Termos, when the Huffington Post shared a post he'd written: "From Beirut, This Is Paris: In a World That Doesn't Care About Arab Lives." "When my people died, they did not send the world in mourning," Fares wrote.

"Their death was but an irrelevant fleck along the international news cycle, something that happens in those parts of the world." That is why, Fares said, it took several days for Termos' story to be known, and shared, outside Lebanon.

- Bloomberg