A car bomb wrecked the front of a building in a predominantly Christian suburb of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, early on Saturday, wounding nine people, hospital officials said.
The motive and target of the bombing in New Jdeideh were not immediately clear. But the local legislator, Pierre Gemayel, called it an act of terrorism that could be an attempt to destabilise the country.
”This has been the message to the Lebanese people for a while — to sow fear and terror among Lebanese citizens,” Gemayel told Al-Jazeera satellite television.
The message is ”if there is a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, look what Lebanon will face”, said Gemayel, a member of the Christian opposition bloc in Parliament and the son of former president Amin Gemayel.
The blast devastated shops on the ground floor of the adjacent building, and blew off the facades of the apartments on the first and second floors.
”We don’t know what and why,” said a white-haired man who was asleep on the second floor when the bomb went off. ”No one important lives here. We’re all regular.”
Standing in the street in blue pyjamas, the man declined to give his name and broke into tears when a neighbour kissed him and asked about his children.
”The two children were taken to hospital with glass cuts, but they’re fine,” he replied.
Police said seven people were injured. But three local hospitals gave a total of nine people treated for light injuries, most from flying glass and debris.
Some witnesses said the car tried to stop in front of a bingo saloon, but security guards asked its driver to move along.
The driver then parked the car a short way down the road. Minutes later, it exploded. People were playing bingo in the saloon at the time of the blast.
Other witnesses said the car belonged to a local resident.
Police on the scene said they were trying to determine the motive.
A police general would only say it was a bomb in a Datsun sedan.
The bomb dug a crater 2m deep. It also damaged parked cars and shop shutters in the street, a commercial area of shops and boutiques on the ground floor with apartments above.
The force of the explosion threw the bomb car 20m across the street, reducing it to a contorted bundle of metal.
The explosion came amid major political turmoil in Lebanon in the wake of the February 14 assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri, and the subsequent withdrawal of Syrian troops to east Lebanon and Syria. Demonstrations and counter-demonstrations, although largely peaceful, have kept tension high between the pro-Syrian and the anti-Syrian camps.
The intensity of the political battle over Syria’s troops in Lebanon has raised fears of a return to the sectarian violence of the 1975-90 civil war. So far, however, the political camps do not conform to religious boundaries, with Christians and Muslims on both sides of the debate.
Bomb explosions had been rare since Lebanon’s civil war ended in 1990, but Hariri was killed in a massive explosion that ripped through his motorcade in downtown Beirut. It is still not known whether the blast, which killed 18 people, was caused by a car bomb or explosives planted under the road.
In October, a car bomb in Beirut seriously wounded an opposition legislator, former economy minister Marwan Hamade. His driver was killed.
In January 2002, a car bomb killed former Christian warlord Elie Hobeika, who was linked to the 1982 massacre of Palestinians in refugee camps, and his three bodyguards. — Sapa-AP