An anti-Syrian lawmaker and eight other people were killed in a car bombing in a Christian suburb of Beirut on Wednesday, plunging deeply divided Lebanon into further chaos days ahead of a crucial vote.
The murder of Antoine Ghanem was the latest in a string of attacks in recent years against prominent critics of Lebanon's neighbour and former power broker Syria and colleagues were quick to point the finger of blame at Damascus.
The international community condemned the attack as a blatant bid to destabilise Lebanon ahead of the parliamentary vote next week to choose a new president, an issue that has exacerbated a months-long political crisis.
The White House condemned what it described as a "pattern of political assassinations and attempted assassinations" aimed at intimidating those working for democracy in Lebanon.
Parliament is due to meet on September 25 to elect a successor for Syrian-backed President Emile Lahoud amid a near-complete political deadlock between the Western-backed ruling majority and the pro-Damascus opposition.
Television footage showed rescuers pulling burning corpses from blackened and mangled cars, some still ablaze, an were wounded," a police spokesman said. At least one of the deputy's bodyguards, Tony Daou, was also among those killed, the guard's mother said.
Ghanem, 64, a lawyer, had been a member of parliament since 2000 with the Christian Phalange party of former president Amin Gemayal, whose son industry minister Pierre was killed in November last year. He was the eighth member of the ruling anti-Syrian majority to be assassinated since the 2005 murder of former billionaire prime minister Rafiq Hariri.
His death has also reduced the anti-Syrian majority in parliament to 68 members out of the now 127-member house, with numbers set to play a key role in the presidential vote.
Christian MP Antoine Andraos accused the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and its "Lebanese agents" of killing Ghanem, saying that his colleague had feared for his life and only hours before the attack had inquired about a bullet-proof car.
"This is an attack aimed at sabotaging all efforts to reach a solution to the current political crisis," Butros Harb, an MP and presidential candidate, added. "You cannot separate this killing from the presidential election." Two hospitals near the scene of the blast said emergency rooms were filled with the injured.
"I was covered with glass debris by the force of the blast," said local resident Shadi Bejjani.
The country has been on edge since the February 2005 Beirut seafront bomb blast that killed Hariri, which was widely blamed on Syria and forced it to end three decades of military domination.