Former Lebanon Premier Hariri Killed in Beirut Blast (Update6)
Feb. 14 (Bloomberg) — A bomb blast in the road by Beirut’s seafront
hotel district killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in
the center of the capital, his office said today.
Hariri, a billionaire businessman-turned-politician, was dead on
arrival at the city’s American Hospital, the state-run news agency
said. Nine people died and more than 100 were injured in the blast,
the agency said on its Web site. The explosion left a crater at least
two meters deep and 10 meters wide.
“This is an irrecoverable loss,” Marwan Iskandar, a Beirut- based
economist, said in a telephone interview. “Rafik Hariri believed in
Lebanon’s economic revival and helped attract international investments
to the city center, the place where the bomb was placed today.”
The bomb’s devastation is the biggest since the end of the Lebanese
civil war in 1990, in which close to 100,000 people lost their
lives. The blast sent glass shards flying three blocks from its center,
according to a witness contacted by Bloomberg News.
Hariri, who was 61, served five times as Lebanon’s prime minister and
spearheaded the country’s postwar reconstruction effort, pushing the
country into debt. He had a close relationship with Saudi Arabia’s King
Fahd and France’s president, Jacques Chirac. He clashed with Syria,
which has about 15,000 soldiers in the country, before stepping down
last year.
Syrian Troops
Hariri resigned in October because of differences with Lebanon’s
Syrian-backed president, Emile Lahoud. The U.S. and France last year
co-sponsored a United Nations resolution on Lebanon demanding that
Syria withdraw its forces from the country.
Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s president, condemned the killing, calling it a
“terrible crime,” according to the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency.
Al-Jazeera and other televisions stations showed video of burning
cars, including one with a man on fire trying to get out, and large
rubble-strewn areas. Two former ministers were injured in the blast,
Agence France-Presse reported. At least 20 cars were set on fire in
the blast, the Associated Press said.
Hariri is credited for attracting Arab investors and tourists to
Lebanon, which has a debt equal to more than 160 percent of gross
domestic product.
“His death could lead to a flight of capital, ruin the tourism industry
and put pressure on the Lebanese pound,” Iskandar said.
The former prime minister was the majority shareholder in Solidere,
the country’s biggest real estate company. Solidere turned war-torn
downtown Beirut, the center of fighting during the 15-year civil war,
into a tourist and commercial district.
HSBC Building
HSBC Holdings Plc’s head office in Lebanon was damaged in the blast,
according to the bank’s Dubai spokesman, Steve Martin. About 100
people work in the head office, he said. No one was hurt.
“All our staff are accounted for,” Richard Beck, an HSBC spokesman
in London, said. “There are no injuries although there may be some
issues of people with minor cuts.”
He said the damage to the building, which is located near the hotels,
is superficial and “there is no reason to believe that HSBC is
a target.”
Born in the southern city of Sidon to a poor family, Hariri was a
Sunni Muslim with seven children, according to his Web site. Hariri,
who grow up in poverty, moved to Saudi Arabia in 1965 to work as a
school teacher, where he made his fortune by rebuilding palaces for the
Saudi royal family. He made a fortune in construction in the kingdom
and owns Saudi Oger Ltd. He and his family are worth $4.3 billion,
Forbes magazine said last year.
The Lebanese government declared three days of official mourning.