{"id":24051,"date":"2018-12-02T19:22:54","date_gmt":"2018-12-02T19:22:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=24051"},"modified":"2018-12-02T19:22:54","modified_gmt":"2018-12-02T19:22:54","slug":"pro-syrian-lebanese-politician-urges-calm-after-aide-killed-by-gunfire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=24051","title":{"rendered":"Pro-Syrian Lebanese politician urges calm after aide killed by gunfire"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-io-article-url=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/1414471\/middle-east\" readability=\"48\">\n<p>\nBEIRUT: A pro-Syrian Lebanese politician urged calm on Sunday after one of his aides was killed by gunfire during a police attempt to bring him in for questioning over accusations of stirring civil strife.<br \/>Wiam Wahhab, a Druze ally of the powerful Shiite group Hezbollah who has close ties to Damascus, has been at the heart of rising political tension over the last week with a series of verbal attacks on Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri.<br \/>Hariri supporters lodged a legal complaint against him after a video surfaced in which he was widely perceived to direct obscene insults at the Hariri family, including the late prime minister Rafik Al-Hariri, without naming them.<br \/>The tension has cast another shadow over efforts to form a new national unity government more than six months since an election, with rival parties still unable to agree on how to share out portfolios in the new cabinet.<br \/>The internal security forces said they went to Wahhab\u2019s village of Al-Jahiliya on Saturday evening to take him for questioning after the public prosecutor accepted the legal complaint against him and referred the matter to the police.<br \/>In a statement, police said one of Wahhab\u2019s aides \u2014 Mohamed Abu Diyab \u2014 was shot in \u201crandom\u201d gunfire by Wahhab supporters and denied the police had opened fire.<br \/>Wahhab\u2019s Arab Tawhid Party said he was hit by a bullet fired by \u201cthe attackers.\u201d<br \/>Wahhab said on Saturday the incident meant \u201ccivil war\u201d but on Sunday urged calm while addressing Abu Diyab\u2019s funeral in Jahilya.<br \/>\u201cI am working to calm the atmosphere. I have (told) the guys it is forbidden to block roads or to annoy any citizen or to open fire during the funeral,\u201d Wahhab told Al-Jadeed TV.<br \/>Wahhab accused officials including Hariri of responsibility for the killing.<br \/>A source close to Hariri, referring to Saturday\u2019s events, said: \u201cThese were judicial proceedings in which we had no intervention.\u201d<br \/>Wahhab has said his comments in the video, which appeared to have been shot by mobile phone at a private gathering, were \u201cgeneral\u201d and not directed at Rafik Al-Hariri.<br \/>Hariri\u2019s Future Movement said last week the Hariris were being targeted by \u201ca campaign of falsehoods\u201d hatched by \u201csick minds\u201d bent on destabilising Lebanon and obstructing efforts to form the new government.<br \/>Lebanon has suffered spasms of political crisis and violence since its 1975-90 civil war. Hariri, Lebanon\u2019s main Sunni politician, currently heads a caretaker government.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BEIRUT: A pro-Syrian Lebanese politician urged calm on Sunday after one of his aides was killed by gunfire during a police attempt to bring him in for questioning over accusations of stirring civil strife.Wiam Wahhab, a Druze ally of the powerful Shiite group Hezbollah who has close ties to Damascus, has been at the heart&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":24052,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}