Muslims Join in Mourning 9 Catholics : Lebanon: Thousands come together in and outside Our Lady of Salvation church in Juniyah. Victims died in a bomb explosion there.

Anguished relatives flung themselves on coffins Monday at a funeral for nine Maronite Catholics that was held at the church where the victims died in a bomb explosion.

Thousands of mourners gathered in and outside Our Lady of Salvation church, which had been cleared of debris and bloodstains overnight. The bomb exploded during Sunday Mass.

It was the deadliest attack since a car bomb killed 17 people in mainly Muslim West Beirut in December, 1991. It came two days after an Israeli settler killed 48 Palestinians as they prayed in a mosque in Hebron in the occupied West Bank.

Across the country, Muslims joined Christians in a government-sanctioned shutdown to show their solidarity against a rekindling of the 1975-90 civil war.

Government offices, schools, businesses, most shops and recreation centers closed in Christian and Muslim areas.

The attack was a setback for Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s efforts to rid Lebanon of the terrorist image it acquired during the civil war, when assassinations, hijackings, kidnapings and suicide bombings occurred regularly.

There was no claim of responsibility for the church bombing in this suburb 12 miles north of Beirut. Media reports said up to six people were being interrogated.

The bombing also wounded 60 people. But the casualties could have been far worse: A larger bomb was found inside the church’s organ and defused.

President Elias Hrawi and dozens of other dignitaries attended the funeral.

The altar was hastily repaired. But walls still bore shrapnel scars, and a small crater in the floor was covered by a piece of plywood.

“She would have been 14 in three months,” George Bachalani said as he wept over his daughter’s coffin. “We never expected her to die in a church.”

Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir, spiritual head of Lebanon’s western-minded 1 million Maronites, presided over the service, assisted by about 100 priests.

He told the mourners that it was the first time worshipers had been attacked in a church in Lebanon.

“All of a sudden what did not happen during the war years takes place today, and the sanctity of the church is desecrated and the blood of worshipers is spilled,” Sfeir said.

He said in a eulogy that he had been warned two weeks ago of an impending plot to blow up Christian churches in Lebanon, and he suggested that terrorists “want us to stop exercising our religious rites.”

“This will never happen,” he said.