Falange Party Leader Escapes Injury as Car Bomb Kills Three
A car bomb exploded today in Christian East Beirut as Falange Party chief George Saade drove by. Police said three people were killed and 17 wounded.
Police said Saade, 57, escaped injury although his bulletproof Alfa Romeo was damaged. The Falange chief was escorted by three carloads of bodyguards, and two of the guards were among those killed.
There was no claim of responsibility for the attack. Saade’s party is a major force in the Christian camp that has been fighting Syrian-backed Muslims in the nearly 14-year-old civil war.
The car bombing occurred on the same day that leaders of the country’s Shiite Muslim factions signed a peace treaty intended to end the nine months of Shiite militia fighting in which more than 500 people have died. The official Syrian news agency said the agreement signed by the Syrian-backed Amal and the pro-Iranian Hezbollah calls for an immediate cease-fire.
This morning, Saade’s motorcade was on a boulevard in the Furn el-Shubback residential district when a red Renault packed with 110 pounds of TNT blew up at 10:30 a.m., police said.
About 10 cars were destroyed in the blast, including two vans belonging to Middle East Airlines, the country’s national carrier.
An hour after the blast, Saade reassured his partisans in a statement broadcast over the Falange’s radio station, Voice of Lebanon.
“My car was destroyed, but I wasn’t hurt, praise be to God,” Saade said.
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