Bombs, Marches Protest Lebanon Prices

Bombs exploded at a bank in Beirut and two grocery stores in Sidon on Friday, and thousands of demonstrators marched through Muslim West Beirut to protest skyrocketing prices.

More than 3,000 women, children, and students marched from the office of Premier Rashid Karami to the nearby Central Bank, where they tore up 1-pound notes and shouted slogans demanding government action to curb inflation.

“The increasing price of the dollar is pushing us to steal,” shouted one wheelchair-bound demonstrator.

The demonstration was peaceful, but police beefed up security outside the Central Bank--target of a grenade attack that injured two people Wednesday--and currency exchanges along once-fashionable Hamra Street closed for fear of trouble.

No Injuries in Bombings

Police reported no injuries in the bomb attacks against a private bank in Beirut and two food stores in Sidon. Authorities also reported three thieves were shot and killed in two attempted robberies in mostly Muslim West Beirut.

The Lebanese pound, valued at 33 U.S. cents in 1975 at the start of the civil war, is now worth a penny and a half--and it is falling fast.

Government sources said that, while Lebanon has no official cost-of-living index, food prices have soared dangerously during the past month, triggering armed robberies at grocery stores and raids on banks.

No Sugar or Rice

“The price of a packet of cigarettes went up from 20 Lebanese pounds to 30 this month. A large can of powdered milk went up from 350 to 500 pounds, a can of tuna fish from 30 to 50. There is no sugar or rice, and one egg now costs 4 pounds compared with 2 pounds the beginning of this month,” a West Beirut grocer said.

Christian and Muslim government officials and Cabinet ministers blame each other for the economic crisis, the worst since the start of the civil war.

Meanwhile, the violence goes on.

Palestinian guerrillas battled Shia Muslim militiamen near the southern port of Sidon, and the fighting was so intense that no casualty count was immediately available, police said.

And the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which cares for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, reported that three of its employees were kidnaped south of Beirut on Friday morning.

“UNRWA officials in Beirut are making urgent contacts with local militias to obtain the employees’ release,” the agency said in a statement.

Police said fighting broke out between militiamen of Justice Minister Nabih Berri’s Shia Amal movement and guerrillas of Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization when the Palestinians ambushed an Amal truck loaded with ammunition on the coastal highway south of Sidon, setting it ablaze.

Anti-Arafat Move

Amal has been fighting the PLO since May, 1985 with the declared aim of keeping Arafat from rebuilding the Lebanon power base he lost in the 1982 Israeli invasion. More than 1,000 people have been killed and 3,000 wounded in the intermittent Amal-PLO war.

The Palestinians controlled Sidon’s industrial sector at daybreak, but Amal launched a major drive around noon to push them out of the neighborhood on Sidon’s southern edge, the reporter said.

Police said sniper fire wounded at least five civilians who were driving along the coastal highway, which connects Sidon with the predominantly Shia sector of southern Lebanon.

Amal gunners pounded the nearby Ein el Hilwa Palestinian refugee camp with mortars to block guerrilla reinforcements, police said. Guerrilla gunners responded by shelling Amal positions in Magdousheh village to the south of their camp, police added.

The U.N. agency’s statement said that an UNRWA truck, loaded with supplies for Palestinian refugees in southern Lebanon camps, also was hijacked and that “no information is yet available on the fate of the truck and its driver.”