BEIRUT, 27 March 2005 — A car bomb in a Christian neighborhood of Beirut triggered a huge fire late last night. The attack, the third in two weeks, injured at least five people, security sources said.
They said a rigged Buick car exploded in the industrial area in Dikwanah suburb in Christian east Beirut. Fire fighters were trying to contain blazes in two buildings as thick black smoke rose into the night sky.
Ambulances and rescue workers rushed to the scene.
“A large bomb exploded near a commercial center in Sin Al-Fil,” said the security source who declined to be named. It was not immediately known if there were people in the buildings. The area houses factories, printing houses and warehouses.
Two explosions in the past week have targeted commercial areas in the anti-Syrian Christian heartland, killing three people and wounding 16.
The assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on Feb. 14 has plunged Lebanon into its biggest political crisis since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war. Lebanon agreed yesterday to an international inquiry into the murder of Hariri as more Syrian troops left Lebanon for home. “Lebanon agrees to the creation of an international commission of inquiry if the Security Council takes such a decision to uncover the truth in the assassination of Rafik Hariri,” Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hamoud told reporters.
He was speaking after meeting ambassadors and senior envoys from three permanent members of the UN Security Council — Britain, China and Russia — to explain the Lebanese position. Ministry sources said he would also meet this week with envoys from the other two permanent members, the United States and France.
“We want to cooperate with the United Nations, the Security Council and with the UN secretary-general, and the ambassadors I met today have favorably received this willingness on the part of Lebanon, as we want the truth, the whole truth, on the assassination,” Hamoud said.
Lebanese opposition leaders renewed demands for the resignation of Lebanon’s security chiefs, which the government has refused to do before incriminating evidence is proven.
“It is not possible to carry out a just, clear and transparent investigation if the heads of (security) agencies remained in place,” Druze leader Walid Jumblatt told a news conference.
Syria continued its troop pullout from Lebanon with hundreds of soldiers heading east for home, a Lebanese official said. But the country’s defense minister said Lebanese forces may be unable to fill the Syrian void — hinting that Syrian soldiers may still be needed.
A Lebanese military official said a total of five Syrian army positions have been vacated in the Bekaa and about 1,000 soldiers from those positions headed to Syria.
Late Friday, 17 trucks carrying troops and goods — some towing anti-aircraft guns — abandoned positions in the central Bekaa Valley and went home, crossing the border at Masnaa in the second withdrawal of Syrian forces from eastern Lebanon in recent days.
An armored carrier carrying soldiers also left a position near the town of Bar Elias on the road to the border yesterday morning, while Syrian units in hills overlooking the Bekaa near the village of Ainata vacated their posts Thursday, departing in 10 trucks.
— Additional input from agencies
