Lebanon reeled Tuesday under the impact of two security tremors that hit seven hours apart: the car-bomb assassination of Ahmed Jibreel's son on Beirut's Corniche Mazraa boulevard and the discovery of missing engineer Ramzi Irani's rotting corpse in Caracas neighborhood. "What jungle are we living in?" moaned An Nahar's reporter Abbas Saleh , who watched Irani's decomposed cadaver being extracted from the trunk of his black Polo Classic by policemen wearing gas masks against the stench of death.

It was the stench that attracted police to that Volkswagen that was amidst a long queue of cars parked on the Caracas seaside neighborhood. A government coroner said one pistol bullet had pierced Irani's left ear and another the heart.

The body was autopsied at the American University Hospital morgue. The date of death was estimated at 8-to-10 days ago. The cause of death was listed as two pistol bullets piercing the heart and his left ear.

Irani disappeared May 7 near Trad Hospital on his way from his office at Total company in Hamra to the Phoenicia hotel to pick up his wife's sister and take her home for the 5th birthday party of his daughter Yasmina.

An Internet news service, Al Qanat, said on its website on Sunday it learnt from unidentified diplomatic sources that Irani had been "liquidated" because "if he spoke of his abductors once he is released a big political crisis will break out, giving one side a weapon against the other."

The report did not elaborate and there was no responsibility claim for Irani's kidnapping and murder. Media speculation, however, said the fact that Irani offered no resistance was an indication that he knew the abductors, which means they belong to a local apparatus.