Beirut

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- A car bomb shook a Christian neighborhood outside Beirut yesterday, killing a Lebanese lawmaker and six other people days before the parliament of this divided country is to hold a presidential election. The killing of Antoine Ghanem, 64, a member of the Western-backed parliamentary majority, was the sixth assassination in two years to target prominent detractors of neighboring Syria. Some analysts said the killing was an attempt by groups loyal to Syria to reduce the size of a parliamentary bloc supported by the United States and Europe.

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims churned in the Lebanese capital yesterday as armed clashes at a university killed at least two people and overflowed into surrounding neighborhoods. Hours after dark, the army imposed an overnight curfew in an effort to restore order. Community leaders took to the airwaves to soothe enflamed emotions. Rampaging youths had smashed cars, started fires and attacked the party headquarters of their political rivals for hours after the gunfire and rioting earlier in the day at Beirut Arab University.

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Hezbollah and its allies paralyzed Lebanon yesterday, sending thousands of demonstrators to seize control of major roads, brawl with government supporters and choke the seaside capital in the acrid smoke of burning tires. The swift seizure of the country's roads took many here by surprise and marked a major escalation in Hezbollah's campaign to overthrow Lebanon's U.S.-backed government. At least three people died and more than 100 were wounded as clashes flared around the country.

BEIRUT -- A new front erupted in Lebanon's simmering political conflict yesterday in the northern city of Tripoli, where running battles between the Lebanese army and a radical new Palestinian organization said to have ties to al-Qaida killed at least 39 people. In the worst internal fighting since the end of Lebanon's civil war 17 years ago, the army battled militants throughout the day in the streets of the port city and on the edges of the Palestinian refugee camp Nahr el-Bared, which late last year fell under the control of a radical group calling itself Fateh al-Islam.

Beirut -- A Lebanese lawmaker who had long been critical of the Syrian regime was killed yesterday along with his son and eight people when a bomb exploded near a popular waterfront promenade in Beirut. The assassination threatened to further destabilize this small country already paralyzed politically, stretched militarily and suffering economically. Walid Eido, 65, a lawmaker with the anti-Syria coalition, was driving with his son Khaled and two bodyguards in a predominantly Sunni part of town when the bomb tore through nearby cafes and ice cream parlors just before 6 p.m. The explosion was so powerful it blew out windows on the 10th floor of a hotel across the street, sending a shower of glass onto the busy street below.

Dr. Samuel P. Asper, a retired Johns Hopkins physician and educator who led the American University Hospital in Beirut during the civil war in Lebanon in the 1970s, died of congestive heart failure Tuesday at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was 83 and lived in Roland Park.While in Lebanon from 1973 to 1978, he kept the hospital open during the conflict that claimed 60,000 lives. His medical compound, which carried a large red cross, was often shelled in mortar fire. Air raids and exploding bombs disrupted his medical school classes.

Kenneth K. Hall,81, whose 47-year career as a state and federal judge included a decision to allow female cadets at The Citadel, died Thursday in Charleston, W.Va., after a long illness.Sola Sierra,63, a prominent human rights activist during the military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, died in Santiago, Chile, on July 1 of a heart attack while recovering from back surgery.Shafik Wazzan,74, who, as prime minister, oversaw the 1982 withdrawal of Palestinian guerrillas from Israeli-besieged Beirut, Lebanon, died Thursday in Beirut of a heart attack.

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Until a few months ago, crossing between East and West Beirut near the waterfront at night meant threading through a labyrinth of empty streets and past ghostly buildings, the abandoned silhouettes of destruction that served as reminders of civil war.That quintessential Beirut experience is no more.Now traffic flies along recently built overpasses and through newly opened tunnels. And from the bridge at Fouad Chehab Avenue, one looks down on a shining cube of light -- the new, 18-story regional headquarters of the United Nations, the first building to be opened in Beirut's central district since the 1975-1990 conflict.

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- For two years, Hans Curvers has followed the bulldozers of Beirut.A billion-dollar campaign to rebuild the city's war-torn downtown has unearthed Beirut's archaeological past. And Curvers has been there to stop the bulldozers from reducing the historic remains to rubble.The fruit of his successful efforts -- and those of other international archaeologists and their Lebanese colleagues -- can be found in the cavernous basement of St. George's Greek Orthodox Church, a storehouse for mosaics, architectural columns and buckets of pottery shards dating from the Iron Age to the time of the Crusaders.

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Pope John Paul II concluded his historic visit to Lebanon yesterday with a strong call for sovereignty, saying the country could never fully recover from its war wounds as long as two occupying armies remain on its soil.The pope did not specifically name the Syrian troops that patrol the streets of Beirut and man checkpoints in the north of the country. Nor did he mention by name the Israeli army, which has commandeered a chunk of southern Lebanon for a security zone.But his meaning was clear in a special papal exhortation on the state of Lebanese Christians.

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Fierce clashes broke out yesterday in the mountains east of Beirut between supporters of the Western-backed government and followers of Hezbollah, the militant group backed by Iran. The fighting, in the Shouf and Aley districts in the mountains overlooking the capital, Beirut, followed overnight clashes in the northern city of Tripoli that left at least two people dead and five wounded, according to security officials. Beirut, where there had been heavy fighting between Sunnis and Shiites since Wednesday, was calm yesterday.

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Lebanon's political and military leaders struggled to pull the country back yesterday from a deepening civil conflict that has left at least 34 people dead in four days of violence between Iranian-backed militias and supporters of the pro-U.S. government. By yesterday evening, the government appeared to back away from the political decree that sparked the confrontation, while the Shiite militia Hezbollah gave up its control of West Beirut, which it had seized handily a day earlier in an offensive that stunned Lebanese and sent shock waves throughout the region.

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- In one swoop, the Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah took over a large section of Lebanon's capital yesterday, altering the country's political balance and demonstrating a level of military discipline and efficiency that left the pro-Western government struggling to exert its authority. In a space of 12 hours, the Iranian-backed group dispatched hundreds of heavily armed Shiite fighters into the western half of the capital, routing pro-government Sunni militiamen, destroying opponents' political offices and shutting down media outlets loyal to Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and to Sunni leader Saad Hariri's Future movement.

Hip audiences may recognize Tom McCarthy only as weaselly Sun reporter Scott Templeton in the final season of The Wire. And more people may see McCarthy's deft cameo as Tina Fey's disastrous first date in today's big-studio comedy release, Baby Mama, than will catch the marvelous independent film he wrote and directed, The Visitor. Yet with The Station Agent (2003) and The Visitor, McCarthy has made films whose size expands in a viewer's heart, mind and memory - and whose influence travels across the globe.

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- A senior Hezbollah military commander, one of America's most wanted men for his alleged links to a string of bombings, hijackings and kidnappings in the 1980s and 1990s, has been killed, the Shiite Muslim group said in a statement yesterday. Hezbollah accused Israel of orchestrating the killing. Security officials in Lebanon said the man, Imad Mugniyah, who was believed to be behind attacks in 1983 on the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut and the terrorist hijacking of a TWA jetliner in 1985, was killed Tuesday night by a car bomb in Damascus, Syria.

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- At least five civilians were killed in Beirut yesterday evening during an hours-long clash between Lebanese soldiers and young Shiite Muslim men protesting electricity cuts, security officials said. A dozen or more people were wounded in the melee when gunfire erupted as demonstrators were throwing rocks and fireworks at troops. Several residents in an adjacent Christian neighborhood were injured by a hand grenade, Lebanese television reported. The violence came two days after a car bomb killed one of the country's top intelligence officials and 12 days after another blast struck a U.S. Embassy convoy, killing three civilians.

Beirut -- Lebanon's shaky government veered into uncertain political terrain early this morning as midnight struck and its president's term expired without the naming of a successor. Faced with a constitutional crisis, both the pro-Western government and the Syrian- and Iranian-backed opposition made competing claims to power, but both sides also ruled out the possibility of violence to resolve differences in the months-long dispute. The outgoing president declared a state of emergency, but the order was derided by many as having no practical effect.

Forty Lebanese members of parliament belonging to the pro-Western, anti-Syria March 14 majority bloc reside in Tower 3 at Beirut's Phoenicia Intercontinental Hotel. With plush couches, stereos and flat-screen TVs, the two-bedroom units at the Phoenicia are swank. But the lawmakers aren't guests; they're prisoners. To get into the Phoenicia, you have to traverse no fewer than three security checkpoints, pass through a metal detector and show ID. Armed escorts from Lebanon's Internal Security Forces accompany guests to their rooms.

BEIRUT -- Why am I not surprised that the latest spontaneous popular revolt against an authoritarian government - in Myanmar - has been sparked and led on the streets by religious figures? Because men and women of organized faith have regularly taken the lead in populist movements for political change throughout the world in recent decades. Myanmar should help clarify parallels in the Middle East and other regions where religious and political forces are at play simultaneously. The people and institutions of religion are usually the last resort available to ordinary men and women who find themselves degraded by autocratic systems or foreign oppression.

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- A car bomb shook a Christian neighborhood outside Beirut yesterday, killing a Lebanese lawmaker and six other people days before the parliament of this divided country is to hold a presidential election. The killing of Antoine Ghanem, 64, a member of the Western-backed parliamentary majority, was the sixth assassination in two years to target prominent detractors of neighboring Syria. Some analysts said the killing was an attempt by groups loyal to Syria to reduce the size of a parliamentary bloc supported by the United States and Europe.