| Hariri becomes latest
victim of political assassinations in Lebanon BEIRUT, Feb 14 (AFP) - The killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri
in a Beirut bomb attack on Monday added to a long list of political assassinations during
and since the country's 1975-1990 civil war.
The perpetrators, in most cases, have never been established.
The death in March 1975 of Maarouf Saad, a leading Sunni Muslim figure in the southern
city of Sidon -- Hariri's birthplace -- after being wounded in a demonstration was
regarded as one of the catalysts that triggered the war.
- March 16, 1977: left-wing leader Kamal Jumblatt, head of Lebanon's Druze community, was
assassinated in his stronghold of Shuf, southeast of Beirut.
- June 13, 1978: Tony Frangieh, an MP and son of former Lebanese president Soleiman
Frangieh was killed along with his wife, daughter and 31 supporters by a Christian militia
commando in his house in the northern town of Ehden.
- September 14, 1982: president-elect Bashir Gemayel was killed in a bomb attack at
Phalangist militia headquarters just eight days before he was due to take office.
- June 1, 1987: Sunni prime minister Rashid Karameh, brother of current premier Omar
Karameh, was killed by a bomb planted under his seat in a helicopter.
- May 16, 1989: Lebanon's grand mufti, Sheikh Hassan Khaled, the religious leader of the
Sunni community, was killed in a car bombing that claimed at least 15 lives.
- November 22, 1989: president Rene Moawad was assassinated only 17 days after taking
office in an attack in west Beirut in an attack that killed 15. He had been returning to
Lebanon for independence day ceremonies following discussions in Saudi Arabia on the Taef
accords that led to the end of the war.
- October 21, 1990: Christian leader Dany Shamun, his wife and two of their children were
killed in a commando raid on their home near Beirut.
A dozen other political figures were killed during the war including two eminent members
of the Sunni community. Islamic Council chief Sobhi Saleh, a moderate who backed
Islamic-Christian dialogue, was killed in October 1986 and Sheikh Ahmad Assaf was killed
in April 1982.
The spiritual leader of the Shiite Muslim community in Lebanon, Imam Mussa Sadr,
disappeared in August 1978 at the end of a trip to Libya.
As peace returned, the assassinations diminished. But on January 24, 2002 ex-minister Elie
Hobeika, former chief of the Lebanese Forces Christian militia was killed in a Beirut
suburb.
On October 1 last year, Marwan Hamadeh, deputy head of the socialist party of Druze leader
Walid Jumblatt was seriously injured in a car bomb attack. |
