Former official in Lebanese Druze party killed

A former official from Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt's Progressive Socialist Party was killed on Thursday in the mountain town of Aley, a police source said. "Sami Maroush was killed on Thursday afternoon with two shots fired from a hunting rifle as he was walking in the town. He was hit in the throat by one bullet and in the chest by the other," the official National News Agency quoted the source as saying. Jumblatt told AFP that Maroush had been a party official for the PSP but said he was no longer actively involved. "We trust the judiciary and we hope the state will find those responsible," he said. Former Lebanese finance minister and member of the Western-backed March 14 coalition Mohammad Chatah was killed in a car bombing in Beirut last month. Chatah's killing was the latest in a string of high-profile assassinations of critics of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime that started in February 2005 with the killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.