Beirut, Lebanon
By Jim Maceda, NBC News Correspondent
Twenty-five years on and it still appears in my nightmares and daydreams: the visual equivalent of a lone, empty shoe or sandal, on top of a pile of rubble, all that remains of the child who once wore it.
Only in my mind’s eye it’s not a shoe – it’s a stepladder. The aluminum kind you’d use to change a bulb or paint the ceiling. It was lingering somewhere inside or against the 1/8 Marines’ barracks in Beirut when a suicide bomber drove his five-ton yellow Mercedes truck, laden with six tons of TNT, right through an unfortified perimeter fence and straight into the lobby of the barracks, setting off the largest non-nuclear explosion since World War II.
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| AP file |
| British soldiers give a hand in rescue operations at the site of the bomb-wrecked U.S. Marine command center in Beirut on Oct. 23, 1983. |
I came across the ladder hours later, and hundreds of yards from the scene. It had impaled a tree trunk like a huge dart, and was hanging, parallel to the ground, swaying in the breeze. A strange image – but one that is seared in my mind when I think about that awful day 25 years ago that marked the first of what would become many radical Islamic terror attacks against Western interests.
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By Irina Prentice
BEIRUT – By Friday afternoon, the street battles which have flared across Beirut over the last three days seemed to have abated somewhat, though sporadic gunfire could still be heard in different areas of the city.
During these tense 72 hours, mostly Shiite Hezbollah and Amal gunmen managed to seize nearly all of the Lebanese capital's Sunni Muslim sector from foes loyal to the U.S.-backed government. At least 11 people have been killed and more than 20 wounded in the armed conflict between the Iranian and Syrian backed Hezbollah fighters and gunmen loyal to the government.
Beirut, perched between the sparkling Mediterranean and a green mountain range, has been badly shaken by the violence –
the worst sectarian clashes the country has seen since the 15-year civil war from 1975-1990. The skirmishes echo off the mountains, amplifying the sound of explosions as they occur.
Throughout Thursday night, heavy fighting took place, with machine gun fire, rocket-propelled grenades and pistol shots making sleep almost impossible for most residents. Compounding the magnitude of the sound was a thunderstorm, which unexpectedly erupted in the same way the armed conflict had a few hours earlier.
"The thunderstorm… eerie timing" said Hanna Defuria, visiting her sister who just moved to Beirut two weeks ago. "It was hard to tell what was thunder and what were gunshots, but when the storm passed there were no gunshots."
Added Laura Defuria, Hanna’s sister: "Amazingly, I don’t feel unsafe. Maybe it is because I am new to the situation, but I feel like it is far away although it is very close."
The sisters are indeed close to the action – they are staying in an apartment on the same street where Saad Hariri, one of Lebanon’s top Sunni lawmakers, lives. Head of the Future Party and deputy in the parliament, Hariri’s residence suffered damage from a rocket-propelled grenade, and the television station and newspaper affiliated with his political party were attacked and ransacked.
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By Richard Engel, Middle East bureau chief
It was a launch party that would have made Microsoft proud, if Microsoft were an anti-Israeli militant group.
Hezbollah held on Thursday what was basically a giant garden party to announce the release of its latest video game, "Special Force II," in which players destroy Israeli tanks, shoot down helicopters and destroy warships; killing Israeli soldiers earns bonus points.
Under a giant marquee in Beirut’s dusty southern suburbs, Hezbollah displayed captured Israeli helmets, rifles and ammunition in glass trophy cases. The turret of an Israeli tank and jeep Hezbollah captured during its 34-day war with Israel last summer were set on mounds like garden statues, artistically lit by red and green spotlights. Families took pictures of the Israeli weapons as their children paid $10 for a copy of Special Force II, designed by Hezbollah’s "Internet Division."
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By Paul Nassar, NBC News Producer
It is a journey that I have made countless times. Arriving in the city I was born in and left -- sometimes even fled -- more times than I care to remember in the past 35 years, has become something of a routine for me. There is no doubt that things have changed here in those years.
The bitter memory of the civil war receded and the battle-scarred buildings and roads have given way to brand new highways and glimmering high-rises. The city has regained the cosmopolitan essence that it had all but lost.
Beirut today reflects the makeup of the whole country, with its diverse population. Muslim and Christian neighborhoods melt into each other, separated in most cases by nothing more than a narrow street. In the historic downtown, minarets and church steeples vie for attention, as if in competition with each other. It is the only city I know where conversations are drowned out by both the muezzin's call for prayer and the chiming of church bells.
My arrival here on Friday should have been no different from the other trips I've made to Beirut. This time, however, things are far from normal. I landed here less than 24 hours after one of the most violent riots between the opposing sectarian groups claimed the lives of at least three people.
As I drove past the Beirut Arab University, I could see some of the remnants of Thursday's clashes: an overturned minibus here, a half burned tire there. Violence is no stranger to Lebanon, but most people had hoped that sectarian strife was something firmly rooted in the (albeit recent) past.
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By Moustafa Kassem, NBC News Beirut Bureau Coordinator
There is tension on every street in west Beirut, not only at the Arab University when the incident between the government and opposition supporters happened Thursday.
In each area and on each block there are Hariri’s people here (Saad Hariri is the leader of the parliamentary majority and the leading Sunni opponent of Hezbollah), and Hezbollah people there. So there is tension in every street.
The army has now taken over. They pushed back the young men and boys and sent them home. So there is an appeal from all of the leaders in Lebanon – including Hariri, Nabih Berri, the House Speaker, and Hezbollah to calm the streets. But the tension is still there.
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