Hundreds of protesters marched to the Lebanese prime minister’s offices following the funeral of an intelligence officer who was killed in a car bombing on Friday.

Thousands thronged Martyrs’ Square, Beirut, on Sunday to attend the funeral of Lebanese intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan, who was killed in a car bomb blast during rush hour along with at least seven others.

Syria is believed to be behind the attack.

Following the funeral, hundreds marched on to the offices of Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati in protest. Throwing stones, hurling bottles and overturning barriers, the protesters called on the resignation of the prime minister, who is seen as being too close to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and to Hezbollah, which forms part of the government in Lebanon.

The slain officer was an enemy of Hezbollah and Syria who helped uncover a bomb plot in August, a revelation that resulted in the indictment of pro-Assad Lebanese Information Minister Michel Samaha. Prime Minister Mikati even admits to the link between the attack and the indictment in August. He said, “I cannot separate the plot uncovered [in August] and what happened [on Friday]. … After the discovery of explosives, logic dictates that the two cases are related.”

The prime minister has since offered to resign, but Lebanon’s president asked him to remain in office to allow time for inter-party talks to resolve the Lebanese political crisis.

Referring to Hassan’s assassination, a Lebanese political adviser told the Washington Post that “this is a big, big, big event, and one cannot begin even to think through the repercussions.” The Post concluded, “If speculation turns out to be accurate that the Syrian government was behind the blast, and that it killed Hassan intentionally, it would mark an escalation and a small degree of internationalization of the Syrian conflict. This would be a not-shocking but still geopolitically significant increase in the war’s impact on the broader region. This in turn risks increasing neighboring countries’ exposure to the conflict and thus their interest in controlling it.”

Pressure is mounting on Syria and on the Hezbollah-led government in Lebanon. In his article “How the Syrian Crisis Will End,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry explained from Bible prophecy how and why Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria will fall, and how Syria will realign with Germany and a bloc of “moderate” Arab states. “Lebanon,” he wrote, “is home today to the Iranian terrorist puppet Hezbollah. We can expect it to also switch allegiance!”

For more information, read Chapter Two (“A Mystery Alliance”) of our booklet The King of the South.