1985 Beirut Car Bombing

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More than 80 people died and 175 were injured in a car bomb explosion in Beirut, Lebanon. The bomb went off outside a block of flats and close to a mosque as worshippers were gathering for Friday night prayers in a densely populated Shia Muslim suburb. It was the worst attack in the Lebanese capital since November 1983 when 61 people were killed in a suicide car bomb attack in the southern port of Tyre. The bomb blew a huge crater in the street and destroyed two seven-storey blocks of flats, a mosque, and a cinema. Many of the dead were passers-by. The blast brought gunmen running on to the streets firing guns into the air to clear the roads for ambulances. Radio stations broadcast appeals for blood donors as fire fighters and civil defence workers tried to remove bodies from under the rubble. Fleets of ambulances jammed the entrance to west Beirut's main hospital. It was soon packed with wounded and dead.

The bomb went off near the home of a leading fundamentalist Shi'a Muslim cleric, Sheikh Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah and it is thought he may have been the target - although he was not hurt in the attack. Sheikh Fadlallah later accused Israel and its "internal allies" of being behind the explosion and he gave a warning to "all those who are playing with fire" that their hands will be "burned by the flames". The blast came at a particularly sensitive time as the Israelis are trying to complete their withdrawal from Lebanon. Some American press reports said the CIA was behind the attack, which was meant to kill Sheikh Fadlallah, who had been accused of supporting the suicide bombers who killed hundreds of US and French troops in attacks on military headquarters in Beirut in 1983 - a charge he has always denied.

1985 Beirut Car Bombing

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