Car Bomb Explodes Near Beirut Bakery; 12 Shoppers Die, 75 Hurt

Glass and shrapnel from an exploding car bomb Friday raked a crowded bakery in suburban Beirut. Lebanese police reported 12 shoppers were killed and at least 75 wounded.

The toll was the highest this year for a Beirut car bomb. Thirteen people have been killed in four previous explosions.

None of Lebanon’s militant factions claimed responsibility for the bombing, which occurred during the morning rush hour in Jal el Deeb, a suburb of Christian-controlled East Beirut.

The blast shattered the relative calm of a 10-hour-old truce in the running artillery duels between Muslim and Christian gunners. It destroyed the bakery, damaged adjoining shops and set 20 cars afire in the street. Windows in the consulate building of the British Embassy, just 50 yards distant, were broken by the force of the bomb, which police estimated at more than 100 pounds of explosives.

Many of the casualties, some grotesquely maimed, were children who had joined their parents to line up for bread during the break in the artillery shelling, according to reports from Beirut.

Salim Hoss, head of the Muslim caretaker government in West Beirut, called the bombing a mass murder. “Civilians whether in the East or West are being victimized,” he said.

Gen. Michel Aoun, head of the rival Christian government in East Beirut, blamed the bombing on the Syrians, who support the Hoss regime and maintain security in the western half of the divided capital. An Aoun communique accused the Syrians of trying to provoke a renewal of the artillery war between his mainly Christian Lebanese Army troops and the Syrian-backed forces of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt.

The two sides have been exchanging fire for the past nine days, triggered by Aoun’s blockade of ports controlled by Muslim militia south of Beirut. The so-called War of the Ports--harbors are prime revenue producers for both government and militia forces--has taken 49 lives, and is considered the worst outbreak of Christian-Muslim fighting in four years.

Another Christian force, the rightist Falangist Party, implied in a Voice of Lebanon radio broadcast that the car bomb was related to the controversy over Salman Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses.” The author went into hiding in Britain late last month when the Iranian leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, demanded his assassination for writing what Khomeini called blasphemies against the Muslim religion.

“The British Embassy has received death threats,” Falangist radio said, noting the proximity of the bombing to the embassy.

According to press dispatches from Beirut, Lebanese guards at the embassy fired into the air to keep reporters from approaching the grounds. No casualties were reported at the embassy.