A pro-Hezbollah Sunni Sheikh was shot and critically wounded Tuesday by a masked gunman in the northern city of Tripoli, security sources said.
The sources told The Daily Star that one of two gunmen on a motorcycle fired multiple gunshots on Sheikh Saadeddine Ghiyyeh, seriously wounding him in the head, neck, shoulder and chest.
“He is alive but in a critical condition,” a medical source at Sayidet al-Hayat Hospital in Zghorta, where Ghiyyeh is being treated, told The Daily Star. He later died in hospital.
The security sources said the gunman shot Ghiyyeh at close range as he attempted to get into his car parked outside his house in Buhsa, Tripoli.
Ghiyyeh is an official in the Islamic Action Front and is close to Sheikh Hashem Minqara, a local preacher in Tripoli who is pro-Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Minqara was arrested after he was accused of withholding information on the twin car bombs in Tripoli in August that killed at least 47 people and wounded hundreds more.
A military court, however, ordered his release a few weeks later and Minqara, who heads the Islamic Tawhid, declared his innocence.
