A bust of late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad was found knocked from its pedestal in southern Lebanon on Sunday in what looked like an outburst of anti-Syrian fury, witnesses said. The statue stood at the entrance to Qana village, which the witnesses said had also seen an exodus of hundreds of Syrian farm workers since the Feb. 14 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, which many Lebanese blame on Syria. It was not known who knocked the statue of Assad, who ruled Syria with an iron fist for three decades, to the ground overnight and struck at it. Authorities returned it to its pedestal. Calls from inside and outside Lebanon for Syria to pull troops and intelligence services from its tiny neighbour have grown louder since Hariri's killing. Thousands have taken to the country's streets chanting anti-Syrian slogans. Some protesters have directed their anger towards the roughly one million Syrian labourers in Lebanon, a source of much resentment among some Lebanese. Tents belonging to Syrian workers were burned down near the northern town of Tripoli a few days after Hariri's death.
