East Beirut Car Bomb Kills 3, Hurts 17

A car bomb exploded in Christian East Beirut on Monday, killing three people, wounding 17 others and spraying shrapnel into the motorcade of a senior Christian official who escaped unharmed, police said.

The blast occurred as George Saadeh, the head of the Falangist Party, Lebanon’s main Christian organization, was riding by in his bullet-proof car.

Saadeh’s car and his two-vehicle escort were hit by flying shrapnel but he was unharmed, police said. Two of his bodyguards were reportedly among the wounded. It was not immediately known who was responsible for the attack.

The right-wing Christian leader, who is also a member of Lebanon’s Parliament, later told reporters that he did not believe it was an assassination attempt because “the route I took . . . is not the road I usually take to my office. . . . I decided only minutes before leaving my house to take this route.”

In Damascus, rival Shiite Muslim militias signed a truce aimed at ending a bloody, nine-month struggle for power in southern Lebanon that has claimed 500 lives.

Leaders from the Syrian-backed Amal militia and the pro-Iranian Hezbollah reached agreement after talks in the Syrian capital between Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati and his Syrian counterpart, Farouk Shareh.