Christopher Hitchens Catches a Beat Down in Lebanese Street Brawl

UPDATE: Hitchens is still in Beirut and went ahead with a scheduled lecture entitled "Who are the revolutionaries in today's Middle East?" at American University in Beirut on Wednesday night, Huffington Post has learned.

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The assault on Christopher Hitchens' body continues - he's been waterboarded, body-waxed and suffered through countless hangovers.

In the latest incident, Hitchens sustained gashed knuckles and bruises in a vicious street brawl with shoe-shopping thugs during a Valentine's Day night out on the streets of Beirut.

Hitchens, the chain-smoking, hard-drinking, intellectually ambitious Vanity Fair columnist, was beat up during the altercation, according to several blogs.

Hitchens was apparently visiting Beirut at the invitation of the Hariri-Saudi group, affiliated with the assassinated Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, when he defaced a poster for the Syrian Social Nationalist party and was assaulted by some members of the SSNP who happened to be walking by, according to the Angry Arab News Service.

Hitchens was out with several other journalists - Jonathan Foreman and conservative blogger Michael Totten when they got into a street brawl on trendy Hamda Street, reports Forbes.com: