Lebanon defence minister survives deadly blast

Middle East Online ^ | 2005 Jul 12 | Henri Mamarbachi

[Wiz]

At least two people were killed in a car bomb blast which wounded Lebanon's pro-Syrian Defence Minister Elias Murr outside Beirut on Tuesday, state televsion said.

Besides Murr, nine other people were wounded in the attack, according to initial figures from emergency services.

Police said earlier that the blast had caused deaths but did not say how many had been killed or wounded.

They said that the minister was lightly wounded while he was driving in his car in the Naccache region, close to Antelias in the Christian suburbs around 10 kilometres (miles) north of Beirut.

Murr, the son-in-law of President Emile Lahoud and deputy prime minister, was taken to Serhal hospital, where an employee said his condition was "good". Seven people were hospitalised, some of them with serious injuries, hospital sources said.

Television pictures showed victims of the blast covered in blood, one of whom, clearly in severe shock, was being helped out of the wreckage of a car through the sun roof and lifted onto a stretcher by rescue workers.

The images showed the burned out and blackened shells of two cars as well as what appeared to be a corpse. Rescue services had descended on the devastated scene and were dousing the still smouldering remains.

The explosion, whose cause has not been determined, comes after anti-Damascus politician George Hawi was killed in a Beirut bomb blast in mid-June in just the latest of a string of bloody attacks in the country.

That attack came days after anti-Syrian journalist Samir Kassir was killed when a bomb exploded under his car in Beirut in an attack blamed on the pro-Syrian regime and widely condemned at home and abroad.