"There are instructions for us not to move, not to have a fixed agenda, not to use the same vehicles," said lawmaker Marwan Hamadeh (pictured right), who survived an assassination bid in October 2004, the first in a string of attacks against prominent anti-Syrian figures in Lebanon.

"We stay put, we don't go out, we only receive people, and everything is filtered," he said.

A special wing of the high-security luxury Phoenicia Hotel on the Beirut seafront has been reserved for about 40 MPs who began moving in after Wednesday's assassination of MP Antoine Ghanem, a source at the hotel said.

Vehicles have been banned from parking near the hotel wing, now an off-limits bunker subject to close security sweeps, said the source, who did not wish to be identified.

Several lawmakers from the ruling coalition blamed the attack, which killed Ghanem (pictured right) and four other people, on Lebanon's powerful neighbor Syria and said it was aimed at reducing the slim majority they hold ahead of Tuesday's vote.

Parliament is due to choose a successor to Syrian-backed President Emile Lahoud before his mandate runs out in November, but rival parties have failed to break a paralyzing political deadlock.

The coalition's ministers, deputies and political leaders have virtually disappeared from public life, many of them hiding out in highly secure locations surrounded by walls, barbed wire and tanks. Others have gone abroad, to France, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

Ghanem was the eighth member of the anti-Syrian majority to be blown up or shot dead since the three-year extension of Lahoud's mandate by a Syrian-inspired constitutional amendment in late 2004.

The United Nations has been investigating the attacks and has named Syrian officials and their Lebanese allies as suspects.

The ruling majority launched a "deputies protection plan" since the June assassination of MP Walid Eido (pictured right), sending dozens to safe residences abroad.

Many cabinet ministers also reside at the prime minister's compound in downtown Beirut which has been surrounded by thick walls and tanks since the start of an opposition sit-in in December.

Ghanem was killed just three days after his return from Dubai. His colleague in the parliamentary majority, Gibran Tueni (pictured right), was also killed in December 2005 just a day after returning from Paris.

"Ghanem had personal bodyguards with him, but the bodyguards assigned to his protection by state security were not there at the time of the explosion," a police spokesman said. "He had sent them on another mission, maybe for diversion.

"Everything indicates that the killers are professionals who are taking advantage of the weakness of security failures in the country," he added.

Hamadeh said that no ministers or deputies dare use their special license plates to avoid drawing attention to themselves.

"We have no social life anymore. We stopped going out, going to meetings, conferences, condolences, seminars or any other social occasion," he said.

MP Elias Atallah said he spends his time in hiding alone, without his family.

"I write and read a lot. I am now reading the book 'One Thousand and One Nights' because our times remind me of the past eras" of violence in our region, he said bitterly.