(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-12-09 16:58

Like the past several years, the year 2007 was still vestured by haze of political assassination. Lebanon has been rocked by a series of blasts, which started with an assassination attempt against Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamade on October 1, 2004.

The last was on September 19, when a car bomb killed lawmaker Antoine Ghanem - a member of the anti-Syrian March 14 coalition which secured its parliamentary majority in 2005 elections. The powerful explosion in eastern Beirut also killed eight others and wounded 92 others.

Ghanem, 64, was the eighth member of the anti-Syrian majority to be assassinated since the murder of ex-premier Rafik Hariri in 2005.

Since then, more than 40 anti-Syrian parliament members have moved into the fortified InterContinental Phoenicia Hotel on Beirut's seaside to avoid a similar fate.

Three months before Ghanem's assassination, anther pro- government lawmaker Walid Eido was killed by a car bomb.

On June 13, Eido's car was ripped through by a bomb as he drove from a seaside sports club in western Beirut. The blast also killed his 35-year-old son, two bodyguards and six passers-by.

The March 14 majority bloc led by Saad Hariri, son of slain former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, accused Syria of killing the anti-Syrian figures, but Syria has denied any involvement in it.

Rafik Hariri was killed in a massive bomb blast in Beirut in February 2005. His death sparked massive protests in Lebanon. Under mounting international pressure, Syria withdrew its forces from Lebanon in April 2005, ending a decades-long military presence there.

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