Category: Terrorism, from Wikidata’s class “terrorist attack”
Assassination of Rafic Hariri
Wikidata classes on our event-class list: assassination, terrorist attack (all its classes: Wikidata item)
On 14 February 2005, former Prime Minister of Lebanon Rafic Hariri was assassinated along with 21 others in an explosion in Beirut, Lebanon. Explosives equivalent to around 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) of TNT were detonated as his motorcade drove near the St. George Hotel. Among the dead were several of Hariri's bodyguards and former Minister of Economy and Trade Bassel Fleihan.
Hariri had been part of the anti-Assad opposition in Lebanon. His assassination triggered the Cedar Revolution, a popular movement which forced Syria to withdraw all its troops in Lebanon by April 2005. The United Nations set up the Special Tribunal for Lebanon to investigate the killing, which along with an independent investigation carried out by Lebanese Brigadier General Wissam al-Hassan, found compelling evidence that Hezbollah carried out the assassination. One of the investigators, Wissam Eid, was assassinated in 2008.
In August 2020, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon found Salim Ayyash, a mid-level operative in Hezbollah, guilty in absentia of five charges including the premeditated murder of Hariri using explosive materials. Three other defendants were acquitted. The panel of judges concluded there was "no evidence that the Hezbollah leadership had any involvement in Hariri's murder and there is no direct evidence of Syrian involvement." Hezbollah denied involvement and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, refused to allow the arrest of Ayyash.
Text retrieved 2026-09-26 from Wikipedia.
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The link is the Wikipedia revision of July 20, 2026 (revision 1365200807), whose lead is exactly the text shown here.
APA 7
Assassination of Rafic Hariri. (2026, July 20). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Assassination_of_Rafic_Hariri&oldid=1365200807
MLA 9
“Assassination of Rafic Hariri.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 July 2026, en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Assassination_of_Rafic_Hariri&oldid=1365200807.
Chicago (note)
Wikipedia, “Assassination of Rafic Hariri,” last modified July 20, 2026, 22:53 (UTC), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Assassination_of_Rafic_Hariri&oldid=1365200807.
Chicago (shortened note)
Wikipedia, “Assassination of Rafic Hariri.”
Chicago cites well-known reference works such as Wikipedia in notes only, not in the bibliography.
This event on Middle East, 1900–present: https://middleeast.events/event/assassination-of-rafic-hariri
If you use the map’s borders: CShapes 2.0 - historical country borders. Schvitz, G., et al. (2022). CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. https://icr.ethz.ch/data/cshapes/ (modified by middleeast.events); West Bank Areas A/B/C: UN OCHA / HDX "Oslo Agreement" Areas A/B/C (West Bank). Distributed under the legacy HumanitarianResponse.info terms: non-commercial use with credit to UN OCHA. https://data.humdata.org/dataset/state-of-palestine-other-0-0-0-0-0; some corrected border points: GeoNames - CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). https://www.geonames.org/
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by Wikipedia contributors, from the article Assassination of Rafic Hariri. Classes are Wikidata’s labels (CC0).