Anti-Syrian politician assassinated in Beirut

BEIRUT (Reuters) - An anti-Syrian politician was killed in Lebanon on Tuesday when a bomb ripped through his car, two days after parliamentary elections brought victory for an alliance opposed to Damascus' role in the country.

George Hawi, a former leader of the Lebanese Communist Party, died instantly in the blast in the Wata Musaitbi neighborhood of Beirut, witnesses and security sources.

"After the explosion, the car kept going and then I saw the driver screaming and he jumped out of the window. We rushed to the car and saw Hawi in the passenger seat with his guts out," Rami Abu Dargham, who owns a sandwich shop nearby, told Reuters.

The 400-gram (one pound) charge was under the passenger seat of Hawi's Mercedes and detonated by remote control, judicial sources said. His driver apparently escaped serious injury.

It was the second killing of an anti-Syrian figure in Beirut this month. Newspaper columnist Samir Kassir was killed on June 2 when a similar explosion destroyed his car outside his home.

The United States said after Kassir's killing it had information about a Syrian hit-list targeting Lebanese leaders. Damascus has denied the claim and denounced Hawi's killing.

Syria bowed to global pressure to withdraw its troops from Lebanon in April after anti-Syrian protests swept the country when former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri was assassinated in a truck bombing in February.

A U.N. team that visited Lebanon certified that Syria had ended its 29-year military presence. But U.N. chief Kofi Annan ordered the team back after Kassir's killing amid claims by Lebanese anti-Syrian opposition figures that Syrian intelligence agents were still running free in the country.

U.N. investigator Detlev Mehlis questioned the head of Lebanon's presidential guard as part of an international probe into Hariri's killing, a U.N. official said.

Syria's critics in Lebanon have urged Colonel Mustafa Hamdan, the most senior of Lebanon's pro-Syrian security chiefs to remain in power since Hariri's murder, to step down.