- Title: LEBANON: MASSIVE CAR BOMB KILLS FORMER PRIME MINSTER RAFIK AL-HARIRI, LATEST.
- Date: 14th February 2005
- Summary: (BN10) BEIRUT, LEBANON (FEBRUARY 14, 2005) (REUTERS) 1. TRACK/GV/MV: SMOKE RISING IN THE DISTANCE FROM EXPLOSION; DAMAGED BUILDING AND SMOKE; SECURITY AND PEOPLE AROUND FIRE FROM EXPLOSION; FIRE RISING FROM EXPLOSION (3 SHOTS) 0.23 (MUTE) 2. GV/PAN/CU: SMOKE AND FIRE FROM BURNING CAR; CLOSE OF BURNING CAR (2 SHOTS) 0.33 3. MV: FOR
- Embargoed: 1st March 2005 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: BEIRUT, LEBANON
- Country: Lebanon
- Reuters ID: LVA75N7J0JZZV7FYZNMQKXMBVYAM
- Story Text: Beirut car bomb kills ex-premier Hariri and at least
eight others.
A massive car bomb killed Lebanon's former prime
minister Rafik al-Hariri on Beirut's waterfront on Monday
(February 14). At least eight others, some of them his
bodyguards, also died.
A senior Hariri aide, former Economy Minister Basil
Fuleihan, was also critically wounded.
The sources said Fuleihan had suffered severe wounds
and was in the intensive care unit of the American
University Hospital.
Hariri's motorcade was blown up as it passed along an
exclusive section of the city's waterfront Corniche.
It appeared to be the biggest bomb in the city since
the Lebanese civil war ended in 1990. The blast could be
heard even outside Beirut's city limits and shattered
windows in buildings hundreds of metres away.
Hariri, a billionaire businessman who resigned from
government last October, had recently joined calls by the
opposition for Syrian troops to quit Lebanon in the run-up
to a general election in May.
Mohammad Jihad Ahmed Jibril, 41, a military leader and
son of Ahmed Jibril of the Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine General-Command (PFLP-GC), was torn to shreds
by a bomb that ripped through his car in Beirut in May
2002.
Earlier that year, a bomb killed Elie Hobeika, a key
figure in a pro-Israeli Lebanese militia involved in a
massacre of Palestinian refugees in 1982.
The explosion close to the St George Hotel gouged a
deep crater out of the road, ripped facades from luxury
buildings and left half a dozen cars ablaze on streets
carpeted with rubble.
Syria, the main power broker in its smaller neighbour
Lebanon, condemned the attack as an "act of terrorism".
Beirut was regularly rocked by car bombs throughout the
civil war, when fighting among ethnic, religious and
political factions all but tore Lebanon apart.
Neighbouring Syria became the ever more dominant player
during the conflict, and its forces took much of the credit
for bringing the war to a close.
But Lebanese voices calling for Damascus to pull out
its 14,000 troops have grown louder, backed by a U.N.
resolution calling for their withdrawal.
Mohammad Jihad Ahmed Jibril, 41, a military leader and
son of Ahmed Jibril of the Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine General-Command (PFLP-GC), was torn to shreds
by a bomb that ripped through his car in Beirut in May
2002.
Earlier that year, a bomb killed Elie Hobeika, a key
figure in a pro-Israeli Lebanese militia involved in a
massacre of Palestinian refugees in 1982.
Hariri, 60, had held office for most of the past 12
years before quitting in October 2004 amid a bitter rift
with President Emile Lahoud.
Born to a modest family from the southern port city of
Sidon on November 1, 1944, the Sunni Muslim Hariri spent
some 20 years in Saudi Arabia, where construction deals
made him a fortune that Forbes estimated at 3.8 billion US
dollars on its 2003 World's Richest People list.
Businessmen praised him for cutting through a paralysed
Lebanese state bureaucracy and rebuilding war-shattered
Beirut. But hopes that economic renaissance would flower
with a Middle East peace process wilted with it instead.
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