Sunni Muslim Chief
Killed in Lebanon 21 Others Are Slain and 100 Wounded in Car Bombing Beirut, Lebanon, May 16 – the religious leader of Lebanon’s Sunni Muslims was assassinated by a car bomb in West Beirut today. The police said 21 other people were killed in the powerful explosion.
The booby-trapped car, which the police said was laden with more than 300 pounds of TNT, blew up in Aishe Bakkar, a crowded residential quarter of Muslim-controlled West Beirut, as a convoy carrying Sheikh Hassan Khaled passed by.
Sheik Khaled, the Grand Mufti of Lebanon, was killed instantly and many of his entourage, including his son-in-law, were among the dead. One hundred other people were wounded, some of them seriously, according to the police.
Official’s Home Damaged
No one claimed responsibility for the explosion, which also damaged the nearby home of Prime Minister Selim al-Hoss. Dr. Hoss, who was unhurt, heads the Muslim Cabinet that claims to be the legitimate government of Lebanon; a Christian-dominated government led by the Army chief, Gen. Michel Aoun, is fighting to defeat the Muslim faction and drive its Syrian ally out of the country.
Sheik Khaled was widely regarded as a political moderate, always advocating coexistence with the Christians.
Patriarch Nasrallah Butors Sfair, spiritual head of the Maronite Catholics, Lebanon’s largest Christian community, was among the first to offer his sympathies to the Sunni community over the Mufti’s death.
(In Washington, a State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said the United States was “revolted by the cold-blooded killing”. And described Sheikh Khaled as “a selfless leader”, The associated Press reported.)
Emotions Inflamed The killing of the senior religious figure inflamed emotions as Lebanon’s warring factions were observing a fragile cease-fire negotiated by a delegation from the Arab League last week. Muslim leaders declared a three day strike, while the Hoss Government proclaimed a seven-day mourning period.
Sheik Khaled was Mufti, or supreme Muslim justice, for 23 years. In addition to heading the Sunni Religious courts, Sheik Khaled was chairman of the Islamic Coalition, a group of Sunni figures that includes former prime ministers, Cabinet ministers and Members of Parliament.
The Sunnis, with an estimated 900.000 adherents in Lebanon, form the second largest Muslim sect in Lebanon after the Shiites. The Druse are an off-shoot of Islam. There are 16 Christian denominations.
A Pivotal Role The clergy has played a pivotal role in Lebanon’s political life since independence 46 years ago because the national system is based on the distribution of state executive and religious posts along lines of belief.
In common with his counterparts in other religious communities, Sheikh Khalid’s views were sought and taken into account by the Arab League mediators who have been trying to find a compromise settlement in Lebanon’s 14-year civil war.
At daybeak today, the Lebanese capital echoed to the din of explosions as Syrian gunners and Lebanese Muslim militia allies fired artillery salvos at Christian harbors north of here to warn ships to stay clear. Simultaneously, fighting with rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns broke out along the Green Line cutting Beirut into Muslim and Christian halves.
An Arab-brokered cease-fire has checked eight weeks of large-scale artillery and rocket duels between Christian militia and Lebanese Army units on the one hand and Syrian troops and Lebanese Muslim soldiers and militiamen on the other. The bombardment has killed more than 350 people, wounded more than a thousand inflicted vast damage on property, paralyzed business activity, and sent more than half of Beirut’s population of one and a half million to safer grounds or leaving Lebanon altogether.
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