Pro-Syrian Journalist Is Shot in Beirut

Three assailants with silencer-equipped pistols wounded politician-journalist Elie Maalouf on Friday, the fourth assassination attempt in five days against a leading, pro-Syrian Lebanese figure.

A police spokesman said the three assailants fired seven shots at Maalouf from a BMW as they drove in Muslim West Beirut at mid-morning Friday.

The spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Maalouf was hit three times in the abdomen, shoulder and face. A spokesman at American University Hospital said Maalouf was in stable condition after surgery.

Maalouf, 36, a Christian, heads the Syrian Social Nationalist Party’s education department.

Many Positions

He also works as a translator for the foreign desk of Lebanon’s leading daily newspaper, An Nahar, and teaches economics at the state run Lebanese University in the capital’s Muslim sector.

A source at An Nahar, speaking on condition of not being identified, said the shooting was “not directed against the newspaper. The attempt is related to the power struggle within the SSNP.”

At least six members of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party have been assassinated in the past year.

The party is divided between supporters of Syrian President Hafez Assad and supporters of Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat, one of Assad’s main Arab opponents.