Car Bomb Kills 50 at Beirut Store : Many Women Are Victims of Blast in Christian Sector

A car packed with dynamite exploded outside a crowded supermarket in a Christian suburb of East Beirut on Saturday, killing at least 50 people and wounding 100, police said.

Most of the victims were women. Children accompanying their mothers were among the dead.

Rescue workers said other victims were believed to be still trapped under the debris, but they held out no hope for finding survivors.

No one claimed responsibility for the bombing. However, commanders of the Lebanese Forces, the main Christian militia coalition, blamed Muslims for this car bombing and another in East Beirut on Wednesday that killed 15 people, and they vowed to “avenge the blood of our innocent victims.”

Cars on Fire

Saturday’s bomb--estimated at 550 pounds of dynamite--went off at 11:45 a.m., setting ablaze about 50 autos in the store’s parking lot and touching off other raging fires in the area. A pillar of black smoke towered above the neighborhood.

Rescue teams said five bodies were retrieved from the Mediterranean hours after the bombing. The bodies had been hurled 300 yards across the coastal highway into the sea by the blast.

Fifteen bodies were dug from the supermarket’s basement storeroom eight hours after the explosion, and a search for other victims continued well after nightfall.

Rescuers wearing safety helmets, their faces blackened by smoke, struggled for four hours to reach the underground storeroom, where several people had choked to death in the acrid smoke.

Rescue efforts were temporarily disrupted as four artillery shells crashed into the area--the sign of continued fighting between Christian and Muslim militiamen, in its ninth day Saturday.

Trapped Upstairs

Scores of men, women and children screamed for help from balconies and windows above, trapped by fire in apartments on the two upper floors of the six-story building housing the Melki supermarket in suburban Antelias, on the coastal highway north of the city.

Firemen and Christian militiamen in combat fatigues climbed ladders to rescue them. Walking wounded staggered through the smoke in a daze, blood streaming from cuts.

Screaming Christian militiamen fired rifles to clear a path through traffic for ambulances. Police said two people were wounded by the gunfire.

“We have no hope of finding any more survivors,” a civil defense worker said, but the search continued in the store’s rubble.

Rescuers said many bodies were charred beyond recognition. According to an earlier police report, 30 of those injured were in serious condition.

One survivor, 8-year-old Daniella Gerarian, said as a nurse bandaged her wounds, “I was getting hot dogs from one of the shelves” when the explosion occurred.

Police explosives experts said the 550 pounds of explosives were in a parked American-model sedan and were apparently detonated by remote control. The blast gouged a crater 3 feet deep and 12 feet wide in the street.

According to police, it was not known which of Lebanon’s score of armed factions was responsible for the bombing. But officials said it occurred on a day when the supermarket is usually crowded and was clearly designed to inflict maximum casualties.

The bombing was one of the worst in Beirut’s eastern sector, which has remained relatively calm during the explosions, kidnapings and street battles that have torn up the largely Muslim western sector of the city.

‘Powerful Revenge’ Vowed

In a statement broadcast Saturday by the Christian Voice of Lebanon radio, the Lebanese Forces militia branded their Muslim foes “criminals who . . . want a dirty war,” and added, “Our revenge will be as powerful as their crimes.”

Premier Rashid Karami, a Muslim, described the bombers as “wild beasts . . . who have no blood running in their veins.”

The threat of retaliation by the Lebanese Forces, the major Christian militia, seemed likely to touch off another spasm of violence.

Sectarian fighting flared a week ago after a monthlong lull. Police said at least 51 people have been killed and more than 260 wounded in daily battles.

President Amin Gemayel, increasingly isolated politically as his authority is eroded, has been unable to halt the fighting, which threatens to wreck his efforts with President Hafez Assad of Syria to end Lebanon’s 10-year-old sectarian fighting.

There was widespread speculation that the recent car bombings are linked to a feud between Gemayel’s Falangist Party militia and a rival Christian alliance of the Lebanese Forces and the Giants militia of ex-President Suleiman Franjieh.

The Falangists see that coalition, which ended seven years of Christian infighting, as a threat.