Lebanon terrorism prober killed

BEIRUT (AP) — A car bomb ripped through east Beirut yesterday, killing Lebanon’s top terrorism investigator as he returned from a meeting about the probe into the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, authorities said. Three others also died in the blast.

The force of the explosion in the primarily Christian neighborhood of Hazmieh set a dozen vehicles ablaze and blew a crater in the asphalt 6 feet wide and 3 feet deep.

The country’s national police chief, Brig. Gen. Ashraf Rifi, confirmed that the car bomb killed Capt. Wissam Eid, who handled police intelligence investigations including “all those having to do with the terrorist bombings” in Lebanon, Gen. Rifi said.

Capt. Eid had survived two previous assassination attempts, including a bomb targeting his house and a raid in the northern port city of Tripoli, Interior Minister Hassan Sabei told LBC television.

Lebanon’s sports minister, Ahmed Fatfat, said the officer was on his way home from a meeting at the headquarters of the U.N. commission investigating the 2005 assassination of Mr. Hariri. The commission’s office is in a hilltop village about a 15-minute drive from the site of the explosion.

Capt. Eid’s bodyguard also was killed, Gen. Rifi said.

Casualty figures fluctuated because some bodies were severely damaged and scattered across the area. A police statement late yesterday put the total figure at four dead — one still unidentified — and 38 wounded.

Lebanon has been hit by a series of explosions, some of them political assassinations, in a deepening 14-month political crisis. Yesterday’s blast came one day after a labor strike that was largely peaceful, and 10 days after a car bomb aimed at a U.S. Embassy vehicle killed three bystanders.

Syria and Islamist militants have been accused in many of Lebanon’s recent bombings. Though the targets have become more diverse in the past few months, with the killing of a top army general close to the opposition in December and the attack on the U.S. Embassy vehicle.

The biggest bombing was the one that killed Mr. Hariri and 22 others, triggering political upheaval and international pressure that forced Syria to withdraw its army from Lebanon. Damascus denied any involvement.

The White House condemned the bombing, calling it “an attack by those who seek to undermine Lebanese institutions and democratic processes and to delay further the selection of a new Lebanese president.”

White House press secretary Dana Perino, asked whether Syria was behind it, said: “I don’t know that for sure. I wouldn’t put it past them.”

Yesterday’s bombing was the second attack against the department in less than two years. On Sept. 5, 2006, Lt. Col. Samir Shehade, deputy head of the intelligence department in Lebanon’s national police force, was wounded when his convoy was targeted by an explosion in the town of Rmeileh, just north of the southern city of Sidon. The explosion killed four persons in his convoy.