BEIRUT, 20 September 2007 — An anti-Syrian lawmaker was killed in a car bombing in a Christian suburb of Beirut yesterday, plunging deeply divided Lebanon into further chaos just days ahead of a crucial presidential election.
The murder of Antoine Ghanem — one of at least nine people killed in the bombing — was the latest in a string of attacks in recent years against prominent critics of Lebanon’s neighbor and former power broker Syria.
The UN Security Council and the United States swiftly denounced the attack, which members of Lebanon’s ruling parliamentary majority blamed on the regime in Damascus, saying it was aimed at scuttling the vote.
“He has died,” Joseph Abu Khalil, a senior official from Ghanem’s Phalange Party, told AFP after the attack in the Sin El-Fil neighborhood in the eastern suburbs of the Lebanese capital.
The bombing took place less than a week before Parliament is due to meet on Sept. 25 to elect a successor to Syrian-backed President Emile Lahoud amid a near-complete political deadlock between the Western-backed ruling majority and the pro-Damascus opposition.
Rescue officials said at least five people had died and 30 were injured.
Television footage showed rescuers pulling burning corpses from one of several burned-out and twisted cars, some still ablaze, and facades of nearby buildings wrecked, with shattered glass on the streets.
Ghanem, 64, a lawyer, had been a member of Parliament since 2000 and was the eighth member of the ruling anti-Syrian majority to be assassinated since the 2005 murder of former billionaire Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Reached by telephone, Ghanem’s daughter Viviane was in tears, and said: “It may be my father but I haven’t officially been informed yet.” Two nearby hospitals said emergency rooms were filled with the injured.
“I was covered with glass debris by the force of the blast,” said local resident Shadi Bejjani. Ghanem is the second member of the Christian Phalange party to be killed after the November 2006 murder of Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel.
His death has also reduced the anti-Syrian majority in Parliament to 68 members out of the 128-member house, with numbers set to play a key role in the presidential vote.
The blast apparently took place near the residence of Pierre Gemayal’s father and former Lebanese President Amin Gemayel, who called for the country’s rival political forces to unite. “It is not any more a question of presidential elections. It is a question of the survival of this country,” he told CNN. Christian MP Antoine Andraos accused the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and its “Lebanese agents” of killing Ghanem.
“This is an attack aimed at sabotaging all efforts to reach a solution to the current political crisis,” Butros Harb, an MP and presidential candidate, added. “You cannot separate this killing from the presidential election.” The country has been on edge since the February 2005 Beirut seafront bomb blast that killed Hariri, which was widely blamed on Syria and forced it to end three decades of military domination.
In February, on the eve of the second anniversary of Hariri’s assassination, three people were killed in the bombing of two buses in a Christian village in the mountains outside Beirut.
Prime Minister Fouad Siniora commended Saudi Arabia’s efforts under the leadership of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah to find viable solutions for the political crisis facing his country.
“King Abdullah is doing everything that is fine for Lebanon and its people. Lebanon is in his heart and mind and he always works for strengthening the unity and solidarity of Lebanese people,” the premier told reporters in Beirut. Siniora said his talks on Tuesday night with King Abdullah in Jeddah focused on major developments in the Arab and Islamic world and Saudi-Lebanese relations.
