BEIRUT, 15 February 2005 — A massive bomb tore through former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s motorcade, assassinating the billionaire businessman who helped rebuild his country after decades of civil war but resigned last October amid a sharp dispute with Syria.
At least 12 other people were killed and 100 wounded, including a former economy minister. The blast raised immediate fears that Lebanon — largely peaceful since the 1990 end of its civil war — was headed toward a new and bloody twist in its divisive dispute over the role of Syria, which maintains about 15,000 troops in the country.
Saudi Arabia strongly condemned the terrorist attack. “The Kingdom denounces the explosion that occurred in the Lebanese capital and led to the killing of Hariri and a number of his escorts,” the Saudi Cabinet said. The weekly Cabinet meeting chaired by Crown Prince Abdullah extended the Kingdom’s condolences to Hariri’s family and the Lebanese people.
“The Cabinet voices the Kingdom’s total rejection of such terrorist activities that target innocent people and cause chaos and destruction,” the Saudi Press Agency said quoting Culture and Information Minister Iyad Madani.
Leaders of Lebanon’s anti-Syrian opposition accused the Syrian and Lebanese regimes of responsibility for the assassination and called a three-day strike.
“We hold the Lebanese government and the Syrian government, the power behind it, responsible for the crime,” MP Bassem Sabeh said after an opposition meeting at Hariri’s west Beirut family home.
Sabeh, flanked by Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and other opposition figures, also demanded that Syria pull out its troops from Lebanon before parliamentary elections due in a few months’ time and that the current pro-Damascus Cabinet of Prime Minister Omar Karami step down.
“We demand the resignation of the government, which has lost all legitimacy, and the formation of a caretaker government, as well as the withdrawal of all Syrian troops before the legislative elections,” Sabeh said, reading from a statement.
The Lebanese National News Agency, quoting a statement from American University Hospital, said Hariri was pronounced dead on arrival, his body mutilated.
Some 300 kilos of TNT explosives were used in the bombing, security officials said. They did not say whether the explosives were placed in a vehicle or on the side of the street.
Hariri was known to travel in a convoy of bulletproof cars that were equipped with systems to thwart the remote-controlled detonation of explosives. But the explosion at 12:55 p.m. (1055 GMT) was so powerful that Hariri’s motorcade was left a burning wreck.
The explosion blew a 10-meter-wide crater in the street, set at least 20 cars on fire, and scarred the front of the landmark Phonecia Hotel, where windows shattered and debris littered the balconies.
In a dramatic scene captured on TV, a burning man struggled to get out of a car window and fell to the ground. A bystander rushed up and beat out the flames with his jacket before picking up the badly burned man. It was not clear if the man survived.
Bystanders and ambulance workers made crude stretchers to carry the wounded to hospital. TV showed several men dragging a slain victim partially covered by a brown blanket through the rubble-strewn street before letting go of his arms and letting him fall to the ground. Flames still licked from his body and his face appeared grossly disfigured.
Heavily armed security forces cordoned off the area with yellow tape as rescue workers and investigators combed the scene apparently looking for casualties or clues to what caused the huge explosion.
A blast so huge it blew out windows more than one kilometer away ripped apart the motorcade of Mercedes vehicles like toys and engulfed the car Hariri was driving in fierce flames.
Black, acrid smoke billowed against a pristine blue sky from the broken facade of Beirut’s legendary St. George Hotel. Young men wailed and clawed at debris to help rescue workers reach what one witness said were five bodies trapped underneath. “Everything around us collapsed,” a Syrian worker at the site said. “It was as if an earthquake hit the area.”
There were no credible claims of responsibility. However, a previously unknown group, calling itself Support and Jihad in Syria and Lebanon, said it had carried out the bombing. It said the attack was a suicide operation and would be followed by more attacks “against infidels, renegades and tyrants.”
The claim, which could not be authenticated, appeared in a video aired on Al-Jazeera satellite television station.
Lebanon’s Supreme Council for Defense instructed the army and internal security forces “to take all necessary measures to control the security situation.” The council, which groups the president, Cabinet ministers and military officials, declared three days of national mourning.
President Emile Lahoud, a long time rival of Hariri, issued a statement saying the killing was “a dark point in our national history.” He promised the perpetrators would be brought to justice.
Hariri’s supporters quickly took to the streets, chanting his praises outside the American University Hospital where he was declared dead. In his hometown of Sidon, supporters blocked roads and burned tires.
Foremost among the wounded was former Economy Minister Bassel Fleihan, a member of Parliament in Hariri’s bloc, who was admitted to the intensive care unit of the American University Hospital, said another pro-Hariri legislator, Atef Majdalani. Hariri’s own Future TV reported that Fleihan was in critical condition and the hospital was preparing to transfer him abroad.
Hariri’s assassination removes a main political buffer in a country divided among an opposition strongly opposed to Syria’s role, and the pro-Syrian government camp. He was killed after taking part in a parliamentary debate where the two camps are divided over a new election law for polls due in April and May.
Hariri was a self-made billionaire who led Lebanon for 10 of the years since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war. He was elected prime minister in 1992 and served until 1998, forming at least three Cabinets. He was elected again in 2000 and served until he resigned in October.
Hariri moved toward the opposition camp after leaving office — in large part because of a dispute concerning Syria’s controversial role in Lebanon.
— With input from agencies
