Hanf writes that Damascus thought the Christian side had won ground enough over the summer, so Syrian guns blocked the Lebanese Front's bid to cross the Beirut-Damascus road and take Aley. Kataeb fighters who had lost comrades at Aley the day before then killed Druze civilians at Salima (de Clerck and Malsagne).

In February 1978 Achkar had led the Lebanese soldiers in the clash with Syrian troops at Fayadiyeh; in October he left the army with about twenty men and founded a 'Revolutionary Lebanese Army Movement'. Boutros was due to fly with the president to the Arab summit in Baghdad when the Lebanese Forces, avenging Achkar, ambushed him on the way to the airport. Lieutenant Qozhaya Chamoun, who led the convoy, was abducted and later murdered; Boutros himself got away.

This bomb ended a wave of attacks (17 September to 2 October 1981, about 300 dead) that de Clerck and Malsagne, after Ronen Bergman, attribute to the 'Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners', set up by Israeli officers; Bergman says its car bombs from October 1981 aimed to provoke the Palestinians into a reprisal that would justify an invasion.

Hanf gives 13 dead and 90 wounded. The candle-carrying marchers were heading for the front between Ashrafieh and the eastern suburbs, held by Lebanese Army troops and Lebanese Forces militiamen alike.