Press Release - Beirut Marathon - 11/21/06

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
                                               Contact: Pat Butcher 
                                                        +44 7900 243460

             Beirut Marathon Postponed After Minister Murdered 

Organisers of this Sunday's Beirut International Marathon have postponed 
the event following the assassination of a prominent minister.

Pierre Gemayel was shot to death by a gunman in a suburb of Beirut this 
afternoon becoming the fifth anti-Syrian member of the ruling government to 
die in the last two years.

"We are just postponing not cancelling the marathon," Zeina Dacache a 
marathon spokesman told the Press Association this evening, asking them to 
cancel travel arrangements for their athletics correspondent.

"He was a good leader and it would be wrong for us to be seen celebrating 
our event but we plan going ahead with it at a future date."

The BLOM Bank Beirut Marathon announced in September despite the military 
troubles following the July war with Israel, they would stage the event.

With a  a naval blockade still in place, and residual skirmishes on the 
Lebanon-Israel frontier still taking place their was admiration for the 
resilience and enterprise they were showing. 

The government fully suporting the venture announced it would fix damaged 
roads in on the route particularly in the south of the city. 

But the race was quickly postponed after the terrorist killing took place 
today.
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