Beirut: Lebanon’s premier, under intense political flak over a car bombing that killed a senior security official, said on Saturday he would stay on after the president said it would be in the national interest.
Prime Minister Najib Mikati spoke after an emergency cabinet meeting discussed Friday’s Beirut bombing that killed at least eight people, according to a government source, and has been blamed on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
But the Red Cross which said scores were wounded, stressed that the final death toll could be revised downwards.
 Mikati linked the murder to last month’s discovery by security forces of attacks allegedly being planned by Michel Samaha, a pro-Damascus former minister, which were aimed at instigating sectarian strife in Lebanon.
“I cannot separate the plot uncovered last month and what happened yesterday… After the discovery of explosives, logic dictates that the two cases are related.”
In Damascus, meanwhile, peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi pressed Syria for a truce to break the cycle of bloodshed there.
But even as he met Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, fighting raged on northern battlefields, where regime jets resumed bombarding the key town of Maaret al-Numan which rebels took on October 9.
 Lebanese opposition figures had demanded that Mikati and his government step down after the blast which killed Internal Security Forces (ISF) intelligence chief General Wissam al-Hassan, a prominent anti-Assad figure.
“I assured the president of the republic (Michel Sleiman) that I was not attached to the post as head of the government,” Mikati told reporters.
“He asked that I stay in place because it is not a personal issue but one of the national interest.”
Amid scattered protests around Lebanon, Saturday was declared a day of mourning for Hassan, 47, who was killed Ashrafieh, an upmarket, mainly Christian area.
 Hassan, who investigated the assassination seven years ago of former premier Rafiq Hariri in a car bombing also blamed on Syria, will be buried near Hariri’s mausoleum in central Beirut on Sunday.
Protesters, some burning tyres, blocked roads in Beirut, Sidon in the south, Tripoli in the north and the Bekaa Valley in the east on Saturday.
In Tripoli overnight, firefights erupted after the office of pro-Hezbollah Sunni party Tawhid came under rocket fire and a Sunni sheikh and party member was killed in crossfire, a security official said.
The bombing’s final death toll is still unclear.
On Friday, official figures put it at eight, but the ISF and the Red Cross both lowered the figure to three on Saturday. The ISF said 80 people were wounded, and the Red Cross 110.
ISF chief General Ashraf Rifi said the bomb “consisted of between 60 and 70 kilos of TNT.”
The site, a mass of rubble and twisted metal, remained cordoned off as investigators sifted for clues.
“They’re preventing us from going back to our homes because they say there are still human remains,” 33-year-old mother Nancy al-Mini told AFP.
The emergency cabinet meeting discussed the fallout from the bombing, after key opposition groups called on the government to quit.
 “The government must leave and we call on Prime Minister Najib Mikati to resign immediately,” Ahmad Hariri, secretary general of the Future movement, said late on Friday.
Hassan, 47, was close to Saad Hariri, himself a former premier who leads the major opposition March 14 coalition of which Future is a party.
In keeping with a complex power-sharing arrangement in multi-confessional Lebanon, the premier is always a Sunni Muslim. But parliament and the government are dominated by the powerful Shiite movement Hezbollah, an Assad ally.
After the bombing, Syria condemned what it called a “terrorist, cowardly” attack.
But both Saad Hariri and Walid Jumblatt, the influential Druze leader, blamed Assad.
“We accuse Bashar al-Assad of the assassination of Wissam al-Hassan, the guarantor of the security of the Lebanese,” said Hariri.
 Jumblatt told AFP “the Syrian regime is expert in political assassinations. Our response needs to be political. A president who burns Syria and is the executioner of Damascus does not care if Lebanon burns.”
Hezbollah called the attack “an attempt to destabilise Lebanon and national unity.”
There have been repeated incidents in which the Syrian conflict has spilled over into its neighbour, and the bombing sparked fears that Lebanon would be sucked further into a conflict that has cost more than 34,000 lives.
Brahimi is hoping to secure a Syria ceasefire during the four-day Eid al-Adha Muslim holiday starting on October 26, which he believes could pave the way for more permanent peace initiatives.
 “We will have discussions here with the government, the political parties and civil society about the situation in Syria,” Brahimi said in Damascus on Friday.
He is backed by UN chief Ban Ki-moon and Arab League head Nabil al-Arabi, and by Washington.
“We urge the Syrian government to stop all military operations and call on opposition forces to follow suit,” the State Department said.
Damascus has said it is ready to discuss the truce plan with Brahimi, while the opposition says the regime must take the first step and halt its daily bombardments.
On the ground, rebels and regime forces remained locked in battle, with Syrian warplanes bombarding Maaret al-Numan again and clashes erupting on a nearby highway, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
It said 65 people were killed on Saturday a day after at least 133 died.
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