Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz on Tuesday pointed a finger at Syria, blaming Damascus for being behind the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri.

Speaking after a briefing with the IDF Northern Command at an army base near the Lebanon border, Mofaz said the attack was launched by "a pro-Syrian terror organization, which, from what we know, is apparently supported by Syria."

"The attack (on Hariri) was intentional," Mofaz reportedly said in a closed meeting with soldiers. "The organization wanted to strike him because he opposed the Syrian presence in Lebanon. Syria is using terror not only in Lebanon but also in Iraq against coalition forces."

Meeting reporters later, Mofaz took the opportunity to blast Syria as a country that supported terror and strongly backed Hizbullah. He said that he hoped that now the foreign ministers of the European Union meeting Wednesday would be emboldened to add Hizbullah to its official list of terrorist organizations.

Asked if the assassination could ignite the northern border, Mofaz said, "We will have to wait and learn more on this incident. The Europeans' harsh condemnation of the attack teaches us that the pressure against Syria is only increasing."

The Lebanese Army declared a state of emergency, spreading its forces in Beirut and Sidon following attempts by supporters of Rafik Hariri to attack Lebanese Prime Minister Omar Karami's house on Tuesday.

Additionally, supporters of former prime minister Hariri reportedly burned pictures of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

In response to Monday's assassination of Hariri, Syria's ambassador to the United States, Imad Moustapha, said, "The assassination is an atrocity aimed at destroying Lebanese national unity and might reverberate negatively throughout the Middle East."

Interviewed by CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Moustapha said Syria condemned the killing, and added: "We disagree with anyone who would say that Rafik Hariri was an opponent of Syria. Actually, it's the other way around."

He said that in the past three weeks, Syria was reaching out to the opposition in Lebanon and Hariri was "asking them to calm down and stop the rhetoric."

Moustapha said Syria had never heard of Support and Jihad in Lebanon and Syria, the group that claimed responsibility for the attack in a video aired on Al-Jazeera television station.

"What is needed in Lebanon now is reconciliation and national unity. This is a dangerous threat [to that]," the Syrian ambassador said.

A stunned nation was in mourning Tuesday, with schools, banks and shops closed, and troops at intersections to prevent violence, following the assassination of Hariri, whose death raised fears that Lebanon might revert to the political violence of its 1975-90 civil war. The streets of the capital were virtually empty Tuesday as Lebanon started three days of mourning.

Police raised the death toll from Monday's massive bombing in downtown Beirut to 17 dead and about 120 wounded.

TV stations and radios played somber music or readings from the Quran, Islam's holy book, as the country prepared to bury Hariri on Wednesday at a downtown Beirut mosque.

At the site of the bombing, troops clamped a cordon around the area. Explosives experts combed rooftops and the street in search of evidence that could reveal what caused the explosion.
Security officials have not confirmed initial reports that the blast was caused by a car bomb.

The dead included Hariri and seven of his bodyguards, crushed and burned in their heavily armored cars by the force of the blast, which police estimated at about 660 pounds of TNT.

Jerusalem Post . com