No image available
/ 21 October 2005
Lebanon’s pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud faced renewed calls to resign on Friday after a United Nations report implicated Syrian and Lebanese security services in the murder of ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri. The killing triggered an international outcry and led many in Lebanon to point the finger at Syria.
Lebanon’s outgoing Defence Minister Elias Murr was wounded on Tuesday morning in an explosion in a Christian suburb just north of the capital Beirut that also caused fatalities, the police said. Murr, the son-in-law of President Emile Lahoud and deputy prime minister, was taken to Serhal hospital, where an employee said his condition was ”good”.
Prominent anti-Syrian journalist Samir Kassir was assassinated on Thursday when his car blew up in a residential sector of mostly Christian east Beirut in an attack that drew widespread condemnation. Lebanese opposition figures blamed the blast on the government and its political masters in Syria.
On the day of Lebanon’s first election since the departure of Syria’s occupying army, Christians are bitter, frightened and divided over what they say has been their ”betrayal” by both the Cedar Revolution — which sprang up earlier this year — and by their own leadership at the moment of the country’s ”liberation”.
”In countries like ours, women enter politics in mourning clothes.” Christian opposition MP Nayla Moawad, who made the comment, is one of a few women running for a seat in Lebanon’s male-dominated Parliament. She was propelled on to the tribal political scene by the 1989 murder of her husband, president Rene Moawad.
A convoy of four United States embassy vehicles was attacked on Friday by angry residents in Lebanon in connection with a child-custody dispute between a Lebanese and his American wife, police said. Men threw stones at the vehicles, which were on their way to the house of Nidal al-Maqhur in the northern city of Hermel, they said.
Syrian soldiers hauling missiles and radar equipment headed home on Tuesday ahead of their country’s planned military withdrawal from Lebanon by the end of the month. A United Nations envoy met Lebanese officials to monitor the progress of the pullout.
A car bomb wrecked the front of a building in a predominantly Christian suburb of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, early on Saturday, wounding nine people, hospital officials said. The motive and target of the bombing were not immediately clear. A local legislator called it an act of terrorism that could be an attempt to destabilise the country.
No image available
/ 25 February 2005
A United Nations team vowed on Friday to be impartial in probing in Lebanon the murder of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri, as Lebanon waited for powerful neighbour Syria to begin a promised troop redeployment. Damascus is under international pressure and from Lebanon’s opposition to withdraw from its smaller neighbour.
No image available
/ 18 February 2005
Lebanon was hunting on Friday for six suspects over the killing of former premier Rafiq Hariri as the Syrian-backed regime faced escalating calls to stand down and Washington issued more stark warnings to Damascus. Hariri’s murder in a bomb blast on Monday sent shockwaves through the country and added to tensions with its political masters in Syria.
No image available
/ 16 February 2005
Screaming and weeping mourners clambered around the coffin carrying the Lebanese flag-draped body of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri as hundreds of thousands of people attended an emotion-charged funeral service on Wednesday at a mosque, two days after Hariri was killed by a huge bomb.
No image available
/ 14 February 2005
Former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, killed in a massive blast in Beirut on Monday, was a self-made billionaire who led his country’s reconstruction efforts after the devastating 1975 to 1990 civil war. Long regarded as the great political survivor, Hariri headed five governments before finally stepping down in October last year.
No image available
/ 14 February 2005
Lebanon’s former prime minister Rafiq Hariri was killed in a huge explosion in central Beirut on Monday. The massive bomb targeted Hariri’s motorcade along this city’s famed seafront boulevard, also killing at least nine other people and injuring at least 100. The explosion set ablaze cars and devastated buildings.
Violence in Iraq has shattered Lebanon’s trade with that country, with shipments through Tripoli port halved and road transport down 70%, as Lebanese remain prey to Iraqi hostage-takers. Out of about 15 Lebanese kidnapped in Iraq, telecom employee Hussein Olayyan was found murdered in Baghdad in June and three others are still being held.
The Shiite Muslim guerrilla group Hezbollah opened fire on Wednesday at Israeli warplanes causing a series of supersonic booms over various Lebanese regions, police said. Hezbollah has threatened Israel with ”costly” reprisals if its air force continues its almost daily violations of Lebanese airspace.