TRIPOLI, Lebanon, May 7 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - A bomb exploded outside the home of a Western Christian missionary couple in northern Lebanon overnight, killing one person, security sources said Wednesday, May 7.

They said the device was planted outside the ground floor apartment of a Dutch missionary and his German wife in a suburb of Tripoli.

It was the second attack on Christian missionaries in Lebanon in six months, and the most recent in a string of attacks on Western targets that has picked up pace since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Police originally identified the man, Jamil Rifai, as the bomber, saying he had been killed when the device exploded after he had planted it late Tuesday, May 6.

But suspicions now lie with a man who has been detained and who had visited the couple several times recently, claiming he was interested in becoming a Christian.

Police in Tripoli said Jakob Griffioen and his wife, who was not named, were awakened by noise at the front door of their apartment and saw someone fleeing down the street, having left a package behind.

"They called for help from a Jordanian and an Egyptian, two of their followers, who live in the adjacent apartment. The Jordanian, who was the first to arrive, was killed instantly by the explosion of the device," which contained two kilograms (4.5 pounds) of explosive, the source said.

Rifai was said to be a Muslim who had converted to Christianity and worked with the couple, who, along with their three children, were apparently unhurt.

The explosion damaged the bedroom and kitchen of the apartment, in Qobbeh, a poor neighborhood in predominantly Sunni Muslim Tripoli, 85 kilometers (53 miles) north of Beirut.

It also blew out the windows of the neighboring apartments and damaged four cars parked outside.

The police said Griffioen, his wife and the unnamed Egyptian neighbor were being interviewed about the incident.

The web site of the Dutch daily Die Telegraaf quoted Griffioen as saying, "my wife saw someone in the garden and warned me. In front of the kitchen door, I saw someone ... lighting up a fuse.”

Griffioen said he immediately warned Rifai, "and both of us went outside. I put out the fuse and we moved the bomb."

He said that he set off after the perpetrator, and the bomb exploded next to Rifai.

A police source said a "man who called himself Mohammed and who had recently visited the couple frequently under the pretext that he wanted to convert to Christianity, is the prime suspect in this attack."

"Mohammed" is among three people detained by police after the incident.

Die Telegraaf reported that Griffioen, 51, had been working in Lebanon for the past 20 years.

It quoted him as saying he had received several threats and was sure that the attack was religiously motivated.

"I talk here about our Lord Jesus," he told the newspaper. "There is a lot of interest in this message, but there are always people disturbed by it.

"I was threatened several times in the past, but I did not really care. I don't take seriously everything I hear, but now it's dangerous to live here.”

Griffioen said he did not know if he would remain in Tripoli.

"I have first to be able to sleep quietly before I can take any decision," he said, adding that he needed to speak with the Dutch embassy.

Sources in Tripoli said the family had been living at the current apartment for the past year and a half.

Evangelical Christian missionaries in Lebanon, a country two-thirds of whose people are Muslim, are strongly disliked by Muslim religious leaders, who accuse them of enticing away their believers.

The mainline Orthodox and other eastern Christian churches in the country are also often at odds with them.

Tripoli has long been a bastion of pan-Arabist sentiments, and Sunni Islamic teachings have left their mark on its traditionally conservative population.

One native of Tripoli, Khaled Mohammed al-Ali, was arrested on Saturday, May 4, and charged with heading a group thought responsible for an April 5 bombing attack on a McDonalds restaurant in Beirut that injured three people.

The people of Tripoli demonstrated strong sympathies for Iraq during the U.S.-led aggression against Baghdad. Some 100,000 people took to the streets there on March 28 in Lebanon’s biggest anti-American demonstration amid reports of large death toll among Iraqi civilians.

Numbers of volunteers also traveled to Iraq during the war to fight on the side of the Iraqi forces.

Security sources could not immediately identify a motive for the Tripoli blast.

But anti-Western feeling has risen in Lebanon during a 31-month-old Palestinian Intifada against Israeli occupation and over the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

In the meanwhile, Lebanese officials said on Wednesday that suspects detained for a series of bomb attacks on Western targets had also tried to kill the U.S. ambassador to the country.

In a statement, the army said it had arrested several members of a network blamed for a string of bombings at fast food restaurants over the last year, and accused them of a "failed attempt to assassinate the ambassador of a major power", said Swissinfo news online quoting Reuters.

"The army intelligence directorate, with the cooperation of the security apparatus of brotherly Syrian forces working in Lebanon, was able to apprehend a number of those who took part in the blasts and other previous terrorist acts," the army statement said.