8
University Daily Kansan
Wednesday, Nov. 13, 1985
Nation/World
Suicide driver kills four at monastery in Lebanon
United Press International
BEIRUT, Lebanon — A suicide driver in a bomb-laden car tried to ram a meeting of right-wing Christian leaders yesterday at a monastery. But guards opened fire, and the car exploded early, killing four people, police said.
Among the 26 injured were the chief targets of the assassination attempt — 85-year-old former Lebanese President Camille Chamoun, Phalange Party chief Elie Karameh and former Parliamentarian George Saade.
They have been critical of a Syrian-mediated peace plan designed to end
10 years of civil war in Lebanon among warring Christian and Moslem militias.
It was the fourth bomb attack in Beirut in less than 24 hours. A car bomb in mostly Moslem west Beirut killed four people and wounded eight Monday night and was followed by a bomb that caused damage but no injuries.
Police said those killed in yesterday's attack included the suicide driver, two army guards and a woman carrying coffee to the meeting of the Lebanese Front, an office of of covert-wing Christian political leaders.
The powerful blast destroyed two
wings of St. Georges's Monastery — where the Christian leaders were meeting — and shattered windows 300 yards away at the U.S. Embassy Annex, which was devastated by a suicide bomber Sept. 20, 1984.
Three previously unknown groups — the Free Christian Youth, the Vanguards of Arab Christians and the Forces of All Arab countries each have been the bombing in anonymous phone calls. But Christian Voice of Lebanon Radio termed the authenticity of these claims "very dubious."
Police said the driver of a Dodge station wagon entered the monastery compound by joining Chamoun's
motorcade but veered off at the last moment and attempted to ram the rear of the single-story building. Two officers plowed as it headed for the building.
"The soldiers averted a disaster," an army spokesman said.
Bomb experts said it was unclear if the driver detonated the 880 pounds of explosives as he came under fire or whether bullets triggered the blast.
The red and blue station wagon carried volatile hexogene and a lot of rockets and other explosive materials," an army investigator said.
The blast tore a crater 6 feet deep
and 40 feet wide in the ground, about 40 feet from the conference room where the Lebanese Front leaders had just started their meeting, witnesses said.
The explosion wrecked the southern wing and triggered a fire in the other wing. Rubble crashed to the floor of the conference room, where a book entitled "The Lebanon We Want to Build" was blown off the table. The engine of the station wagon was tossed 100 feet away.
The Lebanese Front was apparently targeted because it objects to the draft of a militia peace agreement, putting it at odds with the Christian
Lebanese Forces, militia, Moslemi
militias and Syria.
The scheduled signing of the accord Nov. 3 was postponed when the veteran Christian politicians demanded the young leaders of the LF push for changes to retain some key Christian powers. The talks are currently stalemated.
"This bomb was aimed at the Lebanese Forces as much as the Lebanese Front," the LF Executive Committee said. "It will not weaken our efforts to arrive at a solution to end the state of war."
President Amin Gemayel, a Christian, and Moslem leaders also condemned the suicide attack.
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