The images are stark: a car's front windscreen smashed, with a rock bigger than a football lying on the front seat.
The attack that killed Muhammad Hamza while he was driving on Beirut's airport road – where an assailant hurled the rock from a bridge – is the most notorious of a spate of such incidents in Lebanon's capital.
It adds to a sense of lawlessness on the motorway, which has many tunnels and bridges, and connects central Beirut to Lebanon's only international airport, Beirut's southern suburbs and the south of the country.
The National spoke to two taxi drivers who use the road several times a day and spoke of a sense of fear. “For the last week I've been dreading the airport road,” said Mohammed. “Every time I passed by I would look and check if there's anyone on the bridge to avoid the rocks.
“In the old days it was only stealing – they parked a car on the side, they would come [and] steal the telephone and the money. But this is a new one to throw a rock.”
The brazen assaults near the Sports City area have provoked outrage across Lebanon, especially given the deeply precarious security and economic situation.
It is also another unwanted security blight on the edge of Beirut's southern suburbs, many of which have been razed in recent Israeli strikes.
Another driver spoke of a new ploy in which the attackers would hide behind a thick tree and pelt rocks and eggs at passing cars, mainly targeting expensive vehicles at night. The attackers would then feign an offer of help while carefully checking for bags and expensive phones. “Really, I was scared, I pass this road maybe three times a day,” the driver said.
The chief suspect in the killing of Mr Hamza has since been arrested by Lebanon's Internal Security Forces in an operation by their main intelligence unit. Footage released by the ISF shows two plainclothes officers with the detained man, who mimics the act of pushing a rock from the bridge.
The ISF said the suspect – a Lebanese citizen born in 1998, who works in scrap collection – had carried out similar attacks before. He would flee to the nearby Sabra neighbourhood after hurling the rocks, and “claimed that he was doing so when he felt pain and tension, that he felt relieved after throwing stones and his goal was not to kill,” the ISF said.
After the attack that killed Mr Hamza, the suspect shaved his beard in a bid to evade capture. While one of the taxi drivers noted the suspect's capture, he added that “it's a party, not one person”.
“I hope it will stop. My car is my only business, if anything happens it would be a disaster. Even now that they have captured him, I always look at it [the bridge] to check for assailants,” he told The National.
