Sources in the office of Lebanon's military prosecutor said the blast carved a hole 70 cm (27.5 inches) deep into the ground, broke glass, in the restaurant and damaged at least two cars. There were no immediate suspects or indications of a motive.

It was the second bombing at a restaurant chain associated with the United States since May, when a blast injured one person at a KFC restaurant in the northern city of Tripoli.

Anti-U.S. sentiment has risen in Lebanon over the course of the neary two-year-old Palestinian uprising and attempts by U.S. ally Israel to crush it. The anger has intensified over threats by Washington to attack Iraq.

Lebanese students and activists have organised boycotts of goods and franchises associated with the United States, which many see as being the power that allowed the Jewish state to invade Lebanon at the cost of thousands of lives in 1982.

Car-Bomb Shakes Jounieh, Wrecks 3 Vehicles

Article from naharnet 23rd Sept. 2002

A one kilogram of high-powered explosives went off in Jounieh early Monday, devastating the car of a Lebanese engineer working in Germany right in front of McDonald's takeaway restaurant and gutting two other parked vans.

The thunderous blast shoot thousands of sleepin residents of the fashionable city north of Beirut right out of bed. Many first thought the explosion was caused by an Israeli jet crashing the sound barrier at rooftop.

The car owner was identified by police as mechanical engineer Roger Hokayem of Ghosta, Kesrouan, who wors in Germany and is on a two-month summer holiday in Lebanon.

He parked his Fiat near McDonald's after dinner with his fiancée and went to her house in Ein Rummaneh in her car. When he returned to the scene Monday morning, he found his car a complete wreck with two other nearby cars reduced to piles of twisted, smoldering metal, police said.

Hokayem was detained for interrogation, a police spokesman said. He could not tell, however, whether the blast was a act against an American target or a return to car bombing attacks that marked the Lebanese civil war.

The explosion occurred at a time when anti-U.S. sentiment is running high across Lebanon over the Bush adminsitration's silence about Israel's new siege of Yasser Arafat's Ramallah headquarters and plans to invade Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein.  
 
related links  
 
- press cuttings: McDonald's
- press cuttings: McLibel
- press cuttings: Campaigns
- press cuttings: McLibel film
- press cuttings: related stuff
- press releases & statements
- photo album, cartoons, subvertisements
- interviews, books, plays, reports
- witnesses statements, transcripts, evidence