Car Bomb Kills Key Arslan Aide in Baisour, Injures 6
A car bomb explosion late Wednesday killed the right-hand man to Druze opposition leader Talal Arslan in the eastern town of Baisour and wounded six people, police reported.
Sheik Saleh al-Aridi, in his late 40s, a member of the party”s central council, was killed instantly when the bomb ripped through his Mercedes car in Baisour”s square, a police official said.
News reports said Aridi had just left his house at about 9:30 p.m. and was alone in his vehicle when the bomb went off. His body was charred, one official said.
The state-run National News Agency said the bomb was planted under the driver”s seat and detonated by remote control.
Other news reports said the car was rigged with 500 grams of TNT planted by "professional" people who had been keeping a close watch on Aridi.
Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat arrived at the victim”s residence in Baisour shortly after the blast in a show of Druze solidarity and to pay his condolences.
Supporters of the Democratic Party opened fire from automatic rifles in the air, in the traditional way of expressing wrath, but no clashes were reported.
Security sources in the Aley Province, of which Baisour is part, said the situation is "under control."
"This is obviously an attempt to spark trouble within the Druze community, but it wouldn”t work," one source told Naharnet, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Mustaqbal Movement leader Saad Hariri, working on reconciliation in the eastern Bekaa Valley, telephoned Arslan shortly after the blast to denounce the "crime" and relay his condolences.
Arslan, who is on a trip abroad, accused Israel of being behind the blast.
Israel "has an interest in igniting strife and exploding the internal situation," Arslan was quoted as saying.
Speaker Nabih Berri and Premier Fouad Saniora also called up Jumblat and Arslan so as to prevent civil unrest.
While Berri believed the explosion targeted "civil peace," Saniora said it was aimed at "disuniting the Lebanese people."
Aridi”s violent death came as Lebanon”s political parties prepared for a national dialogue next week aimed at reconciling their differences, which in May brought the country close to civil war.
The killing was a grim reminder of the series of bomb attacks that have shaken Lebanon in the last three years, killing a number of anti-Syrian politicians.
In February 2005, five-time Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was killed by a huge bomb on the Beirut seafront. The international and domestic backlash against his killing resulted in Syria withdrawing its forces from its tiny neighbor after nearly 30 years.
Lebanon and Syria just last month announced their intention to open diplomatic ties for the first time since independence some 60 years ago.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said last week that he expected Damascus to establish full diplomatic relations with Beirut by the end of this year.
The last car bombing in Lebanon dates back to January, when a senior intelligence officer investigating Hariri”s killing and that of other politicians was slain with three other people in the Lebanese capital.
The attack came as Lebanon was grappling with its worst political crisis since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.
The crisis left the country without a president for six months, and led to sectarian clashes that left more than 65 people dead in May.
That same month, however, feuding political parties struck an agreement in the Qatari capital Doha that led to the election of army commander Gen. Michel Suleiman as Lebanon”s new president and the formation of a national unity cabinet.
Clashes between rival communities have continued intermittently since then, especially in the northern city of Tripoli, where Alawites and Sunnis earlier this week signed a reconciliation accord aimed at restoring state control to the port city and ending sectarian bloodshed.
The national dialogue due to begin next Tuesday is set to focus on forming a "national defense strategy" in which the relationship between militias and the army in defending the country is to be defined.