A HUGE car bomb explosion in Beirut yesterday killed a top Lebanese security official whose investigations implicated Syria and Hezbollah in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri seven years ago.
The rush-hour bomb in the centre of the Lebanese capital killed eight people and wounded about 80 others, heightening fears that Syria’s war is spilling over into Lebanon.
Among the dead was Wissam al-Hassan, the head of a Lebanese intelligence agency who had also uncovered a recent bomb plot that led to the arrest of a pro-Syrian Lebanese politician, a Lebanese official said.
Al-Hassan was a close aide to Hariri, a Sunni Muslim who was killed in a 2005 bomb attack in downtown Beirut.
Yesterday’s bombing was seen as being linked to the heightened tension between Lebanese factions on opposite sides of the conflict in Syria. The explosion ripped through the street where the office of the anti-Damascus Christian Phalange Party is located.
Phalange leader Sami al-Gemayel, a staunch opponent of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and a member of parliament, condemned the attack.
“Let the state protect the citizens. We will not accept any procrastination in this matter, we cannot continue like that. We have been warning for a year. Enough,” said Gemayel, whose brother was assassinated in November 2006.
The war in Syria, which has killed 30,000 people in the past 19 months, has pitted mostly Sunni insurgents against Assad, who is from the Alawite sect linked to Shia Islam. Lebanon’s religious communities are divided between the two sides.
The blast occurred when parents were picking up children from school, and sent black smoke billowing into the sky. Several cars were destroyed and the front of a multistorey building was badly damaged.
An employee of a bank on the street pointed to the blown-out windows of his building.
“Some people were wounded from my bank. I think it was a car bomb. The whole car jumped five floors into the air,” he said.
Michael Fish (25), a British musician visiting Beirut, said he was in his hotel a street away when the explosion happened. “At first I thought it was an earthquake. It shook the whole hotel for a second.”
Lebanese prime minister Najib Mikati said the government was trying to find out who carried out the attack and those responsible would be punished. – (Reuters)