BEIRUT, Lebanon -- A 220-pound bomb destroyed the Iraqi Embassy Tuesday, crushing to death at least 25 people and wounding 100 others inside the flattened five story building.
The explosion tore through the embassy in Moslem West Beirut at midday, ripping out the building's structural pillars and bringing down all five floors on the people trapped inside. Police said the death toll was expected to climb 'far higher' than 25.
An elevator carrying Iraqi Ambassador Abdel Razzak Lafteh was blown down the shaft, but the diplomat managed to scramble out of the wreckage unharmed and directed the evacuation of dead and wounded.
An anonymous telephone caller claiming to represent the Army for the Liberation of Kurdistan, an area under Iraqi control, called right-wing Phalangist Radio to claim responsibility for the blast -- the most devastating terrorist attack against a diplomatic mission in war-ravaged Beirut.
Syrian and Iraqi forces swarmed around the perimeter of the wrecked building, firing automatic weapons to keep crowds of reporters and curious pedestrians away as bulldozers uncovered the mangled bodies of the victims buried in the rubble.
Red Cross workers said at least 25 people were killed and another 100 wounded in the explosion, which completely flattened three-quarters of the embassy.
The end of the building's eastern wing was tilted crazily at a 45 degree angle over the crushed diplomatic offices. Shattered glass littered nearby streets under clouds of dust and smoke.
Police said terrorists apparently tunneled through sandy ground into the heavily guarded embassy compound and planted a 220-pound TNT bomb among the building's six structural pillars.
But other sources said an arsenal kept inside the embassy for security purposes may have detonated.
The scene of the explosion in Beirut's waterfront district resembled an armed camp, with Syrian troops sealing off roads and gunmen riding shotgun on the roofs of ambulances that raced the wounded to Beirut hospitals.
Iraqi gunmen and their Palestinian and Lebanese sympathizers poured into the streets of Syrian-controlled West Beirut after the blast, blocking intersections in a display of rage over the bombing.
Beirut has been the scene of a secret war between Iraq and Iran, in which at least a dozen diplomats from both countries have been assassinated since the Persian Gult War between the two nations war broke out in September 1980.
Iraq's Rafidein Bank has been the target of several rocket attacks.
Other diplomatic missions have also been targets in the warfare that has raged between different Arab governments and armed militias in Lebanon since the country's civil war began in 1975.
