BEIRUT, 2 October 2004 — A remote-controlled Beirut car bomb wounded a prominent Lebanese opposition politician and killed his driver yesterday, weeks after the former minister quit the government in protest at Syria’s grip on Lebanon.
The target of the attack, Druze parliamentarian Marwan Hamadeh, resigned as economy minister last month to protest against Parliament’s extension of Syrian-backed President Emile Lahoud’s term by three years.
The attack came as Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, who has called on Lahoud to resign and denounced the extension of his mandate as unconstitutional, was trying to put together an opposition front with anti-Syrian Christian politicians.
Lahoud called the attack on Hamadeh an attempt to sow “internal strife on the national level”.
Lahoud’s message was echoed by Syria, which has the political last word in its smaller neighbor and stations thousands of troops there. Washington, and a US-backed UN resolution, demand that Damascus loosen its grip on Lebanon.
“This heinous crime targets civil peace in Lebanon, and I believe that all Lebanese and all those who love Lebanon deplore it,” Syrian Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam told reporters at the hospital where Hamadeh was being treated.
Hamadeh had just left his home in the Manara shorefront district of the capital when a blast tossed his car to the side of the road and set two others on fire. His driver was killed and a bodyguard seriously wounded, hospital officials said.
Hamadeh suffered shrapnel wounds and second-degree burns but was in stable condition after four hours of reconstructive surgery on his face, the American University Hospital said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Lebanon charged 35 people yesterday with planning “terrorist” attacks on foreign diplomatic and Lebanese targets, over what authorities have called a foiled Al-Qaeda-linked plan to blow up Italy’s Beirut embassy. The alleged plot was the most recent in a string that authorities say have foiled in Lebanon.
Lebanese authorities last week announced the arrest of 10 people, including a man described as an Al-Qaeda operative, after receiving a tip from Italian authorities that thwarted a car bomb attack on the Italian embassy in central Beirut.
Court authorities subsequently announced additional arrests in the plot, which Lebanese officials said involved two cells and included plans to bomb the Ukrainian consulate and Lebanese court and security buildings.
But the arrests have provoked skeptical comments in Lebanon. Charges filed to a military court accuse 30 of the suspects — nine of them in custody — of forming cells to carry out the attacks which were to include bombings of the Italian embassy, the Ukrainian Consulate and several Lebanese security and court buildings. The other five face charges relating to possession of weapons and explosives.
