BEIRUT: Press Martyrs Day in Lebanon, which falls Wednesday, is of special significance this year, as May 6, 2015, commemorates one century of martyrdom and sacrifices made by Lebanese journalists. Lebanese journalists and nationalists advocating freedom from four centuries of Ottoman rule were hanged on three occasions in 1915 and 1916, in what is […]

  Army chief Gen. Jean Qahwaji vowed late Tuesday to continue the battle against terrorists, saying the military would stop militants from dragging strife to Lebanon. “The army is committed to confronting terrorism with all its strength and decisiveness,” said Qahwaji in a speech at the opening of a regional conference in Beirut. The military […]

  A Papal envoy will arrive in Beirut at the end of May to press forward the election of a new head of state amid the sharp rift among the political arch-foes over a consensual candidate. Local newspapers reported on Tuesday that the Vatican’s dispatched envoy comes in light of Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi’s recent […]

  SIDON, Lebanon: Fears of a dramatic deterioration in the security of Ain al-Hilweh spiked Monday, after a Palestinian member of the Hezbollah-linked Resistance Brigades was shot dead in the camp, in the fifth such incident this year. The killing coincided with the visit of a senior Palestinian official. Azzam al-Ahmad, a member of the […]

  Lebanon is rediscovering a century-old tragedy that most had forgotten — a devastating famine, caused by blockades and a locust infestation, that killed a third of its population. From 1915 to 1918, in the midst of World War I and before modern-day Lebanon existed, between 150,000 and 200,000 people died of malnutrition and disease, […]

  BEIRUT: Lebanese security authorities have foiled a plot to assassinate Sidon politicians, including MP Bahia Hariri, local daily Al-Liwaa reported Monday. The report, citing reliable sources, said security agencies have thwarted a “serious” scheme to assassinate high-ranking Sidon personalities with the aim of creating sectarian strife starting from the southern provincial city. MP Bahia […]

  Gunmen entrenched on the outskirts of the eastern Lebanese border reportedly withdrew from their positions as the Lebanese army denied involvement in a gunbattle outside the country’s border. “Information obtained during the past two days indicates that gunmen withdrew in a limited manner from posts controlled on the outskirts,” a source close to Hizbullah […]

  SAO PAULO: Mayor Fernando Haddad’s current post was previously filled by one Gilberto Kassab. Decades earlier, the same office was held twice by Paulo Maluf, who also served as provincial governor. The city’s history includes such political figures as Guilherme Afif and Gabriel Chalita. Although the names suggest otherwise, the political saga described above […]

  A Palestinian man was on Monday the second member of the Hizbullah-affiliated Resistance Brigades to be murdered in a month at the southern Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Hilweh, the state-run National News Agency reported. Mujahed Balous was critically injured on Sunday when gunmen cut off the electricity from his house and shot him […]

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Though Lebanon has been swept by a gentrifying and disfiguring development rush, some older monuments still stand tall. Strolling downhill from the Clemenceau neighbourhood for a coffee on the seaside Corniche, you’ll see the towering building of the Holiday Inn: bullet-riddled and rocket-pierced.

The once-plush hotel, which opened for business just two years before the Lebanese civil war broke out in 1975, has remained in Beirut’s collective memory – not for its glamour or architectural design, but as a front-line, a demarcation between east and west, and a symbol of war.

The Holiday Inn represented an affluent time for the city: the building became part of a luxury developmental bubble at a time when Beirut’s banks were growing fat on deposits from the region’s petrodollars. However, the civil war obliterated the hotel’s ambitions of becoming a social hub, with cinemas and restaurants crowned by a rooftop rotating restaurant towering over the district.