MEHTAR LAM: A suicide car bomber struck a funeral in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, and a police source said senior officials were among the dead and wounded. A spokesman for the governor of Laghman province, where the attack took place, said there were casualties in the blast but he was not able to confirm whether officials were among them. The police source, who declined to be identified, said the deputy head of Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security Intelligence agency, Abdullah Laghmani, had been killed by the bomb, at a funeral in the provincial capital Mehtar Lam. Laghman governor Lutfullah Mashal was also wounded in the blast, the police source said. A witness in the provincial capital saw a pick-up truck carrying wounded people covered in blood.
BEIRUT: Thousands of people converged Saturday on central Beirut to mark the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Lebanese former premier Rafiq Hariri.Waving Lebanese flags and carrying pictures of the slain leader, men, women and children gathered under sunny skies in Martyr's Square where members of the parliamentary majority were to address the crowd. The rally comes as final preparations are underway in The Hague for the launch of the international tribunal set up to bring Hariri's killers to justice. It also comes as the country prepares for legislative elections in June that will pit Western-backed political parties against a Hezbollah-led alliance backed by Syria and Iran.Hariri died in a massive car bombing on February 14, 2005 that also killed 22 others. The assassination was widely blamed on then Lebanese power-broker Syria, which has denied any involvement. The attack on the Beirut seafront was one of the worst acts of political violence to rock Lebanon since t...
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