Hariri Assassinated: Beirut Shaken by Massive Blast

A 1,000-kilogram bomb detonated beneath the motorcade of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri as it passed the St. George Hotel on Beirut’s waterfront on February 14, 2005. The blast killed Hariri, 21 others, and wounded 226 people, leaving a crater ten meters wide in the street. The assassination triggered the largest political upheaval in Lebanon since the civil war and forced Syria’s military out of a country it had occupied for nearly thirty years. Hariri was a self-made billionaire who had served as prime minister twice and spent hundreds of millions of his personal fortune rebuilding Beirut after the 1975-1990 civil war. He was the most prominent Sunni Muslim political figure in Lebanon and had recently broken with Syria over its insistence on extending the presidential term of its ally Emile Lahoud. Hariri was preparing to lead an anti-Syrian coalition in upcoming parliamentary elections when he was killed. The assassination electrified Lebanon. Within weeks, over a million people gathered in central Beirut on March 14, demanding Syrian withdrawal and an international investigation. The Cedar Revolution, as it became known, succeeded: Syria withdrew its 14,000 troops by April 2005, ending a military presence that had begun in 1976. A United Nations Special Tribunal for Lebanon was established to investigate the killing. The tribunal, working for over a decade, eventually convicted Salim Ayyash, a member of Hezbollah, in absentia for the assassination in 2020. Hezbollah denied involvement. Syria also denied any role, despite a UN investigation that found extensive evidence implicating Syrian and Lebanese intelligence officials. Ayyash was never apprehended. Hariri’s murder removed the one figure with enough wealth, stature, and cross-sectarian appeal to potentially unify Lebanon — and the country has not found another since.