Car Bomb Blast in East Beirut Kills 6, Hurts 40

BEIRUT â€”  A car bomb tore through a crowded shopping center in East Beirut and wrecked a passing school bus packed with children Friday, killing at least six people and wounding 40, police said.

The bomb--about 110 pounds of explosives packed into a Datsun sedan--went off during the lunchtime rush hour near the busy Moussa shopping center in the Zalka neighborhood in the northern sector of Christian East Beirut, police said.

The blast knocked shoppers and passers-by to the ground, and the force of the explosion devastated the school bus, blowing out its windows and hurling razor-sharp shrapnel into children. Blood covered seats in the wrecked vehicle.

At least six people were killed and 40 wounded, police said.

Second of the Year

The car-bomb blast, the second in the Christian sector of the city this year, also scorched three stories of an apartment building over the shopping center and destroyed five cars. Four shops were gutted and eight were severely damaged.

The last car-bomb explosion in Lebanon was on Jan. 7 when unidentified attackers tried to assassinate 86-year-old Christian political leader Camille Chamoun on the outskirts of East Beirut. Six people, including three of Chamoun’s bodyguards, were killed and 35 wounded. Chamoun, a vocal critic of Syrian involvement in Lebanon, suffered only minor cuts and bruises.

Positions Rocketed

Meanwhile, Palestinian gunners in the Druze-controlled Shouf Mountains southeast of Beirut rocketed Shia Muslim militia positions in Muslim West Beirut on Friday, police reported. Police said two people were killed and about 40 wounded.

The barrage was apparently an attempt to relieve military pressure on Palestinian refugee camps and their 14,000 residents--besieged by Shia Amal militiamen for nearly four months.

About 500 people have been killed and 2,000 wounded since Sept. 30 in the “camps war� between Amal and Palestinian forces. The Shias want to prevent re-establishment of the kind of strong Palestinian presence that led to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

The shelling Friday was preceded by renewed clashes in and around the sprawling Chatilla and Borj el Brajne refugee camps in southern Beirut.

A small bomb also went off near a restaurant in the Cola area of West Beirut, but no casualties were reported. No one claimed responsibility for the bombing.