Beirut bomb kills former Sunni minister Mohammed Chatah

The bomb killed Mohammed Chatah, a former finance minister and a senior aide to former prime minister Saad Hariri, as he drove through central Beirut, security officials confirmed.

The health ministry said more than 70 other people were also wounded in the attack .

Lebanon has suffered a wave of bomb attacks in recent months as tensions rise over Syria’s civil war.

Prime Minister Hariri heads the western-backed coalition in Lebanon, which is engaged in feuding with Hezbollah, who are allied to Syria’s President Assad.

The National News Agency has said the explosion was a car bomb, but security officials said they had no immediate confirmation.

Recent bombings have targeted senior Hezbollah figures or districts where the Shi’ite group dominates.

The blast was heard across the city, sending thick black smoke billowing through the downtown commercial district behind the government headquarters.

The National News Agency has said the explosion was a car bomb, but security officials said they had no immediate confirmation.

Chatah was on the way to a meeting at Hariri’s downtown residence when the bomb was detonated.

Footage broadcast on Lebanese TV showed medical workers rushing the wounded to ambulances, with at least two bodies seen lying on the pavement.

Fears remain that Lebanon, still recovering from a 15-year civil war that ended in 1990, is on the brink of descending into full-blown sectarian violence.

Chatah, a prominent economist and former ambassador to the US, was one of the closest aides to former prime minister Rafik Hariri, who was killed in a truck bombing in Beirut in 2005.

We are likely to see more deliberate use of horrifying violence in the days and weeks ahead. Mohammed Chatah blog post, February 2013

He later became finance minister when Hariri’s son, Saad, took power, and stayed on as his senior adviser after he lost the post in early 2011.

In a blog post last February he wrote; “We are likely to see more deliberate use of horrifying violence in the days and weeks ahead.

“Many, especially in neighboring Lebanon, are wondering whether this will include a widening of the conflict beyond Syria’s border in order to leverage the pressure on the west into submissive negotiations with Assad.

“They are also asking whether the west will counter by altering its own strategy and finally agreeing to provide the rebels with the kind of weapons which can tilt the balance in their favor, and force Assad into accepting an exit deal. It may not be long before we know the answer.”

Timeline of recent attacks
12 July 2005: deputy prime minister and defense minister Elias Murr survive car bomb in north Beirut.
25 September 2005: TV news anchor May Chidiac loses an arm and a leg from a bomb placed under her car.

12 December 2005: Gibran Tueni, a prominent anti-Syrian newspaper editor and politician, is killed by a car bomb.

21 November 2006: Pierre Gemayel, the industry minister and a prominent Christian politician, is shot dead by gunmen in Beirut.

13 June 2007: Walid Eido, an anti-Syrian member of parliament, is killed along with his son, two bodyguards and six others in an explosion in Beirut.

19 September 2007: Antoine Ghanem, a pro-government lawmaker from the right-wing Christian Phalange Party, is killed in a blast in the Christian suburb of Sin el-Fil, east of Beirut.

12 December 2007: Francois Hajj, the army's head of operations, and his driver are killed in a car bombing in the Christian Beirut suburb of Baabda.

25 January 2008: car bomb kills senior police intelligence officer Wissam Eid, a bodyguard and at least four others in Hazmieh, a Christian neighborhood on the edge of the Lebanese capital.

19 October 2012: car bomb kills the chief of Lebanon's police intelligence department Wissam al-Hassan, in a Christian neighborhood in east Beirut.