Sydney Security Braces For Darwiche Funeral

Thirty-seven-year-old Abdul Darwiche was gunned down in his four-wheel drive in the driveway of a western Sydney service station on Saturday afternoon.

Police say a man shot Darwiche several times with an automatic weapon after they had an argument at the Bass Hill service station.

The 37-year-old then drove and crashed his car into a park across the road.

Darwiche's wife, three of his four daughters and a niece witnessed the shooting while eating at a nearby restaurant just metres away.

It was the latest event in a notorious turf war between two Lebanese families that has seen at least three people murdered.

A former New South Wales Assistant Police Commissioner, Clive Small, says Darwiche was a big player in the drug trade. Mr Small says the Darwiche family has been feuding with another family, the Razzaks, for years.

"The Razzaks and Darwiches have been involved in crime over a long period of time," he said.

"They've had their own crews. They reached a point in the late 90s and 2000s, where they'd grown to such a stage that they were naturally going to fight over territory and the territory was over drugs and control drugs and drug sales in certain areas.

"In addition to that, there was some personal problems between the families."

Police have sought to play down suggestions of retribution over the killing after the leader of the Lakemba mosque, Sheikh Taj el-din Al Hilali, visited the Darwiches on Saturday and called for calm.

Police have set up a 21-member task force to investigate the killing of Darwiche, who was well-known to them.

In 2006, the crime network head had to be restrained outside court when his younger brother was jailed for life for the double murder of two people from the Razzak family.

Ziad Razzak and Mervat Nemra had died in a hail of bullets from an attack on their Greenwich home in 2003.

Another brother, Albert Darwiche, told the ABC in 2007 that he feared the murderous blood feud would be reignited.

By ABC Australia.