Beirut car bomb attack on March 8, 1985

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The Beirut car bombing on March 8, 1985 was an assassination by a car bomb in Beirut , the aim of the spiritual leader of the Shiite Hezbollah , Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah has been. More than 80 people were killed and another 200 injured in the attack. The car bomb exploded in Bir al-Abed , a densely populated district predominantly inhabited by Shiites. The bomb attack was the most serious attack in Lebanon since October 1983.

The crime scene was only a few meters from Fadlallah's house and is near a mosque where believers gathered for Friday evening prayers. Fadlallah escaped the attack unharmed because he was late to talk to an old woman.

The strength of the explosion, the force of which was equivalent to around 200 kg of dynamite , destroyed a cinema and two seven-story apartment buildings. Many of the dead were bystanders and believers who were leaving the mosque at the time of the explosion.

The explosion caused chaos, and gunmen fired into the air to disperse bystanders, clearing the way for ambulances to haul away the dead and injured. The radio called for blood donations.

First, Fadlallah blamed Israel for the attack. Israel occupied a large part of Lebanon during this period. Then, in May 1985, The Washington Post published a report. As a result, the Deuxième Bureau - the intelligence department of the Lebanese army , which was then dominated by Maronites with ties to the Forces Lebanaises - hired third parties to carry out the attack. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) vehemently denied having known about the attack in advance.

In his book Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981–1987 , Bob Woodward reports on an interview with William J. Casey , the then CIA director, shortly before his death, in which the latter is said to have admitted that the CIA was Saudi Has sought Arab assistance in retaliation for the 1983 attack on the US base in Beirut . However, the authenticity of this interview is controversial. Sheikh Fadlallah has always denied involvement in the October 1983 attacks. 241 US soldiers and 58 French paratroopers were killed.

According to some reports, the Lebanese politician and militia leader Elie Hobeika organized the actual execution of the bomb attack . It has not yet been known who is actually responsible for the attack. Hobeika was killed in a bomb attack in 2002.

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Middle East Information Service No. 9/1996 , Deutsches Orient-Institut, Hamburg 1996, p. 31
  2. ↑ Ute Meinel: The Intifada in the Bahrain Oil Sheikh , LIT Verlag, Berlin / Hamburg / Münster 2003, ISBN 3-8258-6401-4 , p. 150
  3. ^ Yonah Alexander, Milton M. Hoenig: The New Iranian Leadership . Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008, ISBN 0-275-99639-5 , p. 70
  4. ↑ Radical, but also open-minded . In: Frankfurter Rundschau
  5. ^ A b William E. Smith: Lebanon Blackmail in Beirut. Time, May 27, 1985; accessed August 26, 2008 .
  6. ↑ a b 60 killed by Beirut car bomb. The Guardian, May 9, 1985, accessed August 26, 2008 .
  7. ↑ a b c Beirut car bomb kills dozens. In: BBC on this day. British Broadcasting Corporation , May 8, 1985, accessed August 26, 2008 .
  8. ^ Richard Zoglin: Did A Dead Man Tell No Tales? Time, October 12, 1987, accessed August 26, 2008 .
  9. ^ Gary C. Gambill, Bassam Endrawos: The Assassination of Elie Hobeika. Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, January 2002, accessed August 27, 2008 .