Death Turns Independence Day Into Nightmare

After dark, when the wreckage had been hauled away, lights from passing automobiles made it appear that a dense fog had settled over Bustros Boulevard.

But pedestrians, rubbing their eyes in discomfort, quickly realized that it was a thick dust left by 400 pounds of explosives in a blast that killed Lebanese President Rene Mouawad and nearly two dozen others.

And as the car headlights played on a blanket of broken glass in the street, the image of glistening snow contrasted uncannily with the slabs of concrete from destroyed buildings, piled near the scene like playing cards tossed carelessly away.

It was an Independence Day that had promised only parades and protocol appearances by foreign diplomats, but it turned into a nightmare.

Ambulances carried the scores of dead and wounded to hospitals after the powerful explosion, which was felt all across this divided city. Windows were shattered up to a mile from the site of the bombing in the Sanayeh district in Muslim West Beirut.

A small pinball shop, owned by a displaced Lebanese but closed for some time, had been used to conceal the massive bomb, at least as large as the one used in an attack against the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983.

Next door, a public school closed for Independence Day sustained heavy damage, as did the Daaboul Taxi Co., one of Beirut’s oldest cab firms. Abed Daaboul, the owner, was near the office when the blast occurred.

“I saw the explosion, then I heard the sound,” Daaboul said. Like many Lebanese who have seen such violence before, he spoke of those fortunate enough to have escaped death. “Look at the school. Think how many hundreds would have died if this had been a school day,” he said.

Lebanese Independence Day celebrations actually took place in private and public schools on Monday and Tuesday, the eve of the holiday. Many children wore paper flags as headbands, and one 4-year-old trudged home behind his mother Tuesday wearing a bow tie in the red and white colors of the Lebanese flag, with a cedar tree in the middle.

At International College, a school for elementary through high school students, the students sang a song Tuesday written by the school’s music teacher. The words may be haunting the students and teachers in the wake of the assassination: “My beloved country, whatever happens, we will never stop fighting for you. We will never let anyone conquer you. Whatever happens, we will never be ashamed of you.”

On Wednesday night, 17 days after Mouawad’s election as the ninth president of the Republic of Lebanon, many residents of Beirut seemed conquered, ashamed and too tired to fight.

A source close to a leading Christian political figure seemed to sum up the feelings of the Lebanese, still reeling from the shocking crime, when he declared: “We are now on a journey into the unknown.”