Bomb injures Hariri probe official

Beirut: A senior Lebanese intelligence officer was seriously wounded and two military policemen accompanying him were killed by a bomb that exploded in their car near the southern city of Sidon on Tuesday, security sources said.

The officer, identified as Colonel Samir Shehadeh, works for the Interior Ministry's intelligence branch.

The roadside bomb in the coastal village of Rmeileh was detonated by remote control as Shehade's two-vehicle police convoy travelled on a highway between two bridges, said the officials.

Shehadeh was among officers involved in Lebanon's investigation into the February 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Al Hariri.

He was behind the arrest in August last year of four pro-Syrian Lebanese generals in Lebanon for their susupected involvement in the Hariri killing.

Shehade's convoy was riddled with shrapnel, witnesses said. Police sealed off the area and began an investigation.

There was no claim of responsibility for the attack in the coastal village of Rmeileh.

The Tuesday explosion came 10 days before UN chief investigator Serge Brammertz was to submit a report to the UN Security Council updating his findings on the Hariri investigation.

The Lebanese government plans in the next few weeks to authorise an international tribunal to try the culprits.

An initial UN report said Syrian security officials and their allies in Lebanese security agencies were involved in the bomb blast that killed Hariri in Beirut on February 14, 2005.

Damascus has denied any role in the assassination, which led to the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon in April 2005.

Hariri's death was followed by more than a dozen bombings that killed or wounded anti-Syrian politicians and journalists. The last such attack killed prominent Christian journalist and member of parliament Gebran Tueni on December 12.