Beirut car bomb kills police intelligence officer

By Yara Bayoumy

BEIRUT (Reuters) - A car bomb killed a police intelligence officer involved in the investigation of assassinations in Lebanon, in an attack in a Christian suburb of Beirut on Friday.

Police chief Brigadier-General Ashraf Rifi named the officer targeted in the blast while on his way to work as Captain Wisam Eid. A bodyguard and two other people were also killed.

Thirty-eight people were wounded.

Eid, 31, worked for an intelligence unit widely viewed as close to anti-Syrian ruling coalition leader Saad al-Hariri and which was frequently criticised by the Syrian-backed opposition.

"Eid had a role in all the files linked to terrorist bombings," Rifi told reporters at the scene.

The assassination was the latest in a wave of bombings and political killings in Lebanon over the past three years. The turmoil caused by the killings has fuelled the country's worst political crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war.

The police intelligence unit has been closely involved in the U.N.-led investigation into the 2005 assassination of Hariri's father, former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, and in a crackdown on al Qaeda-inspired militants.

Interior Minister Hassan al-Sabaa said Eid, who was a communications engineer, had been targeted before. He took up his post after a roadside bomb wounded his predecessor, Samir Shehadeh, in 2006.