60 killed by Beirut car bomb

A car bomb killed about 60 people and injured more than 200 at dusk yesterday near the home of a prominent Shi'ite clergyman in a southern Beirut suburb. The booby-trapped vehicle exploded 10 yards from the home of Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah. It pulled down the outer walls of an apartment block which is being built, set fire to cars and gouged a crater in the road. Beirut radio said Fadlallah was unharmed.

Security sources estimated that the blast was the equivalent of 440lbs of dynamite. After the explosion, gunmen of the Muslim fundamentalist Hezbollah (Party of God) and the Shi'ite Amal movement fired automatic weapons into the air to clear roads for ambulances taking the victims to hospitals in mainly-Muslim West Beirut . The blast was the worst such explosion in Beirut since the truck bombing of American and French peacekeeping headquarters here in October, 1983, which killed 241 US servicemen and 55 French soldiers.

The US aircraft carrier, Eisenhower, left Majorca hurriedly last night, apparently to be in position if a decision is made to evacuate Americans from Lebanon. The State Department spokesman, Mr Edward Djerejian, said: 'Embassy personnel are not being evacuated from Lebanon. Obviously we continue to be concerned about the security of US government personnel and have their safety and their status continually under review.' The Eisenhower left Majorca three days ahead of schedule, so fast that 110 of its crewmen were left behind.

Rescuers were still searching for survivors buried under the rubble of the eight-storey building more than an hour after the blast, and firemen were fighting blazes in dozens of cars set on fire in a parking area between the cinema and the mosque.

Mr Fadlallah accused Israel and its 'internal allies' of being behind the explosion. He warned 'all those who are playing with fire that their hands will be burned by the flames.' The Shi'ite Amal movement, which has been fighting Israeli occupation troops in southern Lebanon, also blamed Israel for the blast, and said in a statement: 'We shall have a reply appropriate in size which will reach those who committed it.'

The blast brought pandemonium to the streets of West Beirut , as fleets of ambulances rushed to hospitals, truckloads of gunmen fired wildly into the air, and passers-by fled for cover. Hospitals quickly filled up, and staff worked late into the night to treat the wounded, many of them in serious condition. Beirut 's crowded southern suburbs are inhabited mainly by poor Shi'ite Muslim families, many of them refugees from the south. Unemployment is high, and street fighting between rival militias is an almost daily occurrence. A car bomb in the southern suburbs on February 18 killed six people and wounded 35.

The US State Department refused to say how many US embassy personnel it had in Beirut , but estimated that there were 1,400 US citizens in Lebanon. It said that many of them were dual citizens. Other sources said that the Eisenihower, accompanied by the US guided-missile destroyer, Mississippi, headed for the eastern Mediterranean. The CBS television network said that two US C-130 Hercules transports, which could be used for an evacuation, arrived in Cyprus yesterday.

Source: The Guardian