9 Killed, 84 Hurt as Car Bomb Topples 2 Buildings in E. Beirut

BEIRUT —  A car bomb rigged with 200 pounds of TNT exploded today between a school and a crowded vegetable market in Christian East Beirut, killing at least nine people and injuring 84, police said.

The 7:50 a.m. blast collapsed two six-story apartment buildings in the Sinn el-Fil residential district and set 12 other buildings on fire. Authorities said three people are missing.

Police arrested two men, aged 19 and 22, in connection with the bombing, a police official said without elaborating.

No group has claimed responsibility for the car bomb, the sixth in East Beirut this year. Officials of President Amin Gemayel’s rightist Christian Falange Party have blamed Syrian-backed rival Christian factions for the previous five attacks, which killed at last 63 people and injured 405.

The blast came a day after the heaviest shelling in four months between Muslim and Christian militias that left 57 people dead and 171 wounded.

Youssef Bitar, a police bomb expert, said the car in today’s bombing, a Renault 5, was rigged with 200 pounds of TNT attached to an 82-millimeter mortar shell.

Rescue workers dug nine bodies from the rubble of the two collapsed buildings. The police official said, “You cannot even tell whether some of the bodies were . . . males or females.”

Blood Donations Asked

Civil defense rescuers said hours after the blast that they feared that others might still be buried in the rubble.

Women and children in pajamas screamed as the wounded were borne on stretchers out of wrecked buildings and taken to five major hospitals in East Beirut. Radio stations broadcast appeals for blood donations.

Firefighters battled blazes in other buildings. Survivors came running out of smoke-blackened apartments as other residents sprinted to bomb shelters. The blast burned out 10 cars and shattered windows within a 500-yard radius.

The rigged car was parked next to the fence of a high school, but police said none of the 2,500 registered students were reported hurt.

Cut by Flying Glass

Among the injured were 25 women shoppers at the vegetable market. Many were cut by flying glass.

“I only remember seeing a red flash, and then felt myself catapulted into the air. I woke up later at (the) hospital with wounds in the right arm, chest and right leg,” said Sami Hayek, a 25-year-old vegetable vendor who was about 150 yards from the car bomb.

Just after the explosion, the Lebanese Forces Christian militia blocked outgoing traffic through the Barbara crossing, 24 miles north of Beirut, for about half an hour. The crossing connects the Christian hinterland with the Syrian-policed northern provinces.

Militia members were searching for two other car bombs, one stashed in a Volvo and one in a BMW, militia sources said. They did not elaborate.

Meeting Scuttled

The Christian radio station Voice of Lebanon said the blast, “like the random shelling, was designed to prevent any meeting between the Lebanese” to negotiate an end to the civil war now in its 12th year in Lebanon.

The shelling scuttled a meeting in Muslim West Beirut between the nation’s top Sunni Muslim and Maronite Catholic prelates who are trying to devise a new formula for peaceful coexistence between the warring Lebanese sects.

The meeting between Maronite Patriarch Mar Nasrallah Butros Sfeir and Grand Mufti Sheik Hassan Khaled had been set for mid-morning Thursday.