8 Die, 80 Hurt in Blast at Gemayel Office

A car bomb exploded Wednesday in front of an East Beirut apartment building housing an office of President Amin Gemayel’s Christian Falangist Party. Eight people were killed and 80 wounded as the dynamite charge exploded in a scene that one witness described as an “inferno.”

The device, which went off in the neighborhood of Ashrafiyeh, contained an estimated 440 pounds of TNT, according to a Lebanese police explosives expert, Roland Jawdeh. It went off outside a five-story structure.

The blast set the building afire and trapped dozens of people on upper floors. Firemen using ladders and rescue teams battled through dense smoke to rescue the fortunate and to pull charred bodies from the rubble. The victims were believed to have included Easter shoppers.

“Everything around me suddenly caught fire and people--dead and wounded--were flung across several hundred yards,” said Elie Attalah, a few minutes after the bomb explosion. “Dozens of cars, shops and several apartments are on fire. It is an inferno.”

Buildings for 50 yards on either side of the apartment building were damaged, and 30 cars were ignited. The explosion gouged an eight-foot-deep crater in the street.

2nd Falangist Office Hit

Another bomb had exploded two hours earlier in a six-story building where another office of the right-wing Falangist Party was located. Police said that six civilians were wounded in that blast.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blasts. Local residents said that before the bombings, they noticed a smoking car and had chased its driver, who walked away quickly and lost his pursuers at a nearby school.

Wednesday’s explosions were the latest in a series of East Beirut bombings since Gemayel loyalists crushed Syrian-backed Christian rivals in January fighting. That militia combat, in which 350 people were killed, torpedoed a Syrian-sponsored peace accord opposed by Gemayel.

Beirut and its outlying areas were also rocked by a series of heavy artillery exchanges and gun battles Wednesday, in which 14 people died. All in all, it was the bloodiest day in Lebanon in several weeks.

Civilians Die

At least 70 people, mostly civilians, were wounded in that fighting between Christians and Muslims in the capital and the hills to the east, police reported. Scores of Soviet-made rockets crashed into Christian areas.

In one residential district, Dikwaneh, a single shell blast killed a man and wounded 13 people, sending more fortunate residents fleeing for shelter.

Thirty other people, mainly civilians, were wounded in exchanges along Beirut’s Green Line, the demarcation zone that divides the capital into Christian and Muslim sectors.

Tank and artillery duels also broke out in the mountains northeast of Beirut between Christian army units loyal to Gemayel and Syrian-backed leftist and Muslim factions who oppose him. Police said that fighting, near Gemayel’s hometown of Bikfaya, killed five people and wounded 25.

In another Beirut outlying area, the poor, Muslim southern suburbs, radio stations accused the Lebanese Forces, a Christian militia coalition that has rivaled Gemayel’s Falangists, as well as the army, of opening fire and provoking retaliatory shooting from Muslim heavy gunners.