| Anti-Syria journalist
becomes latest victim of Lebanon political violence BEIRUT, June 2 (AFP) - Prominent anti-Syrian journalist Samir Kassir was killed
Thursday when his car blew up in a neighborhood of mostly Christian east Beirut.
Kassir's murder comes in the wake of the February slaying of former prime minister Rafiq
Hariri, and is the latest in a string of assassinations to strike Lebanon during and since
the country's 1975-1990 civil war.
The perpetrators, in most cases, have never been established, and the attacks have gone
unclaimed.
- March 7, 1975: Maarouf Saad, a leading Sunni Muslim figure in the southern city of Sidon
-- Hariri's birthplace -- died after being wounded in a demonstration, an event that 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 10, 1978: spiritual leader of the Shiite Muslim community in Lebanon, Imam
Mussa Sadr, disappeared at the end of a trip to Libya.
- April 26, 1982: Prominent Sunni figure Sheikh Ahmad Assaf was killed. A dozen other
political figures were killed during the war including Islamic Council chief Sobhi Saleh,
a moderate who backed Islamic-Christian dialogue, who was killed in October 1986.
- 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.
- October, 1986: Islamic Council chief Sobhi Saleh, a moderate who backed
Islamic-Christian dialogue, was killed.
- 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 Chamoun, his wife and two of their children were
killed in a commando raid on their home near Beirut.- January 24, 2002: ex-minister Elie
Hobeika, former chief of the Lebanese Forces Christian militia, was killed in a Beirut
suburb.
- October 1, 2004: Marwan Hamadeh, deputy head of the socialist party of Druze leader
Walid Jumblatt, was seriously injured in a car bomb attack.
- February 14, 2005: Former premier Hariri was killed in a Beirut explosion. A total of 19
others were killed in the attack and 220 wounded. The former deputy minister Bassel
Fleyhane was gravely wounded and died on April 18.
Apart from Kassir's killing, three people have been killed and dozens injured in a series
of bomb blasts since the assassination of Hariri. The following is a list of the attacks,
which mostly took place late at night:
- March 19: A car bomb exploded in Jdeide, a northern suburb of Beirut, wounding 11
people.
- March 23: Three people were killed in an explosion in a Kaslik shopping centre, north of
Beirut, that also wounded three.
- March 26: A car bomb attack in an industrial zone in northeast Beirut wounded six.
- April 1: Nine people were injured in an explosion in a commercial and residential
neighborhood of Broumana in the Metn region east of Beirut.
- May 6: An explosion in the Christian coastal resort of Junieh north of Beirut wounded 29
people. |