FORMER Lebanese minister Mohamad Chatah, who opposed Syrian President Bashar al Assad, has been killed in a massive bomb blast, that one of his political allies blamed on Lebanon's Shi'ite Hezbollah militia.
The attack also killed five other people and threw Lebanon, which has been drawn into neighbouring Syria's conflict, into further turmoil after a series of sectarian bombings aimed at Shi'ites and Sunnis over the past year.
Former prime minister Saad al-Hariri accused Hezbollah of involvement in the killing of Mr Chatah, his 62-year-old political adviser, saying it was "a new message of terrorism". Mr Hariri added: "As far as we are concerned the suspects are those who are fleeing international justice and refusing to represent themselves before the international tribunal."
Mr Chatah's killing occurred three weeks before the long-delayed opening of a trial of five Hezbollah suspects indicted for the 2005 bombing that killed former prime minister Rafik al Hariri, Saad's father, and 21 other people.
The trial is due to open in The Hague in January. The suspects are all fugitives and Hezbollah, which denies any role in the Hariri assassination, has refused to cooperate with the court, which it says is politically motivated.
Preliminary UN investigations implicated Syrian officials.
Mr Chatah, a Sunni Muslim, was a vocal critic of Hezbollah. A message on his Twitter account less than an hour before the blast accused the group of trying to take control of the country.
The conflict in Syria has polarised Lebanon and increased sectarian tensions there.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article