Nick Blanford, correspondent for The Times in Beirut, said today’s killing of Gibran Tueni has revived fears of Syria’s lingering control over Lebanon."Everyone is jumping to the conclusion that the Syrians must be responsible, bearing in mind that Tueni was probably the leading critic of Syria. He was elected to parliament in May and was a very vocal member of what was then the opposition and is now part of the government.

"This comes on the eve of the UN security council discussing the latest report of the commission investigating Hariri’s death. "There has been a feeling for some months now that Syria has a hit list of prominent anti-Syrian critics in Lebanon which they are working their way through. Tueni was the most prominent among them. "Tueni spent a lot of time in France, along with a number of other high-profile critics of Syria, because of the death threats. We believe he arrived back in Beirut yesterday and was driving from his home in the mountains to his office in Beirut on a winding road, passing the side of a steep valley.

"It seems that the bomb was in a car parked on the side of the road and the bombers were on the other side of the valley, where they had a clear view of the motorcade approaching. They hit the button as he went past, blowing his car off the road and into the ravine."The explosion was so fierce that windows in buildings in a nearby industrial estate were shattered."At first people thought that it was just another random car bomb attack but as the news trickled through that Tueni had been killed there was a genuine sense of shock. He was an extremely well-known figure."I was at the scene when one of the police officers went up to a man who worked  with Tueni, and told him. He broke down in tears… just put his head in his arms on a car and sobbed.

BEIRUT, Dec 11 (Reuters) – In Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square, 11 photographs hang on a wooden wall, showing hundreds of thousands of anti-Syrian protesters thronging the city’s streets after the February assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. The pictures, yards away from Hariri’s burial site, bear testimony to a surge of street anger — dubbed the "Cedar Revolution" by the United States — that prompted Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon after a 29-year military presence.

Nora Mourad protested for 40 days before the April pullout but now she cannot look at the pictures without regret. "At that time, I felt we were making history. But now when I walk past the place I feel bitter," she told Reuters. The protests erupted because many in Lebanon blamed Syria for Hariri’s killing, a claim Damascus strongly denies. A United Nations interim report has suggested that top Syrian security officials and Lebanese allies planned the assassination. "It is good that we have pictures to prove that we were there … I feel that we have moved 1,000 steps back since then," said Mourad, a political activist.

By Afif Diab CHTOURA, Lebanon Dec 9 (Reuters) – Lebanon’s Hizbollah guerrilla group accused Israel of carrying out a failed attempt to kill one of its officials on Friday and said it would do "what is necessary" to defend itself.

"We blame the Zionist enemy for planning and executing this attack," a Hizbollah statement said after a blast destroyed the official’s car seconds after he left the vehicle and went into the house of a senior leader of the group in eastern Lebanon. "The Islamic Resistance (Hizbollah’s military wing) will bear its responsibility…and do all … necessary to cut off the hands that target its Mujahedeen (fighters) with evil … and defend Lebanon and its people," the statement said.

Dec 9, 2005