Beirut blast kills anti-Syria MP

Beirut - A journalist and anti-Syrian member of Lebanon's parliament was killed Monday morning when a massive car bomb exploded in an eastern Beirut suburb, opposition officials told CNN.

A Red Cross worker at the scene said four people died in the blast.

Gebran Tueni, the head of An-Nahar newspaper, died in the explosion, which destroyed more than half a dozen vehicles and shattered windows in buildings for hundreds of meters.

A high-ranking Lebanese security source said Tueni's cell phone and laptop computer were found at the site of the bombing.

Journalist Anthony Mills called it "a scene of destruction," saying windows were broken in buildings for hundreds of meters.

Video from the scene showed several burned-out vehicles along the roadway.

At least 10 cars were destroyed, some tossed into a valley in the hilly Christian Mkalles area on Beirut's eastern entrance, The Associated Press reported.

The attack followed a series of bombings targeting people viewed as supporting the opposition and rejecting Syrian influence in the country.

On February 14, former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was killed in Beirut when a car bomb exploded by his convoy.

Since then, other prominent opposition journalists and columnists have been killed in similar attacks, but despite investigations, authorities have made no arrests.

"The most frightening thing about this is nobody knows why, nobody knows how, and nobody knows who's next," Nadim Shehadi, who directs the Center for Lebanese Studies at Oxford University in Britain, said in September.

The blast comes as the U.N. investigator probing the assassination of Hariri delivered his second report to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. -- CNN News

Click Here To Have Your Say On This Story

Brudirect.com News

Brunei's Fastest Growing Website with