Tags:
Journalism of Courage
A huge car bomb on Monday killed Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, a billionaire who masterminded the country’s reconstruction from its 1975-90 civil war.
At least 12 others, including several of Hariri’s bodyguards, died when his motorcade was blown up as it passed through an exclusive section of Beirut’s seafront, four months after he resigned as prime minister.
Former Economy Minister Basil Fuleihan, also riding in the convoy, was critically wounded. At least 100 other people were hurt, officials said. The explosion outside the St George Hotel gouged a deep crater in the road, ripped facades from luxury buildings and set cars ablaze on streets strewn with rubble and broken glass. Vehicles from Hariri’s convoy were torn apart despite their armour plating. A senior security source said the cause was a car bomb.
A previously unknown Islamist group said in a video aired by Al Jazeera television it had carried out a suicide attack against Hariri because he supported the Saudi government.
It added it was “the beginning of many martydom operations against the infidels and apostates in the Levant”. The claim could not be confirmed.
Hariri had remained politically influential since his resignation and recently joined opposition calls for Syrian troops to quit Lebanon in the run-up to a May general election.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad called the blast a “horrendous criminal act” and told Lebanese President Emile Lahoud no effort should be spared to find the killers.
The Shia Hizbollah guerrilla group called it “ a heinous crime” aimed at planting strife in the country. —Reuters
