A financial dispute was behind the shooting, and police dismissed any sectarian motives, Beirut police chief Maj. Gen. Walid Koleilat said. But others, noting the gunman was Muslim and most of his victims Christian, questioned whether religious divisions contributed to the violence.

Police said the gunman, identified as Ahmed Mansour, began firing in the air and then turned his gun on people in the offices of the teachers' compensation fund, a department of the Education Ministry. He was being held at a police station Wednesday afternoon.

Koleilat said the gunman, who had worked for the fund for 23 years, went methodically through offices, shooting. Some of the victims ran out onto a balcony to escape the gunfire, but the gunman shot through the windows, killing two, whose bodies rested on the edge of the railing.

The building housing the fund is a few hundred yards from the main Education Ministry compound and across the street from the literature department of Lebanese University. About 200 police searled the area.

About 20 relatives waiting outside wept as the bodies were being removed from the scene nearly three hours after the attack. They wailed whenever a body was carried out and tried to rush through the police cordon to remove the sheet to identify the victim.

Colleagues of the gunman who were in the building at the time of the shooting said the 43-year-old man arrived at midmorning armed with two pistols and a Kalashnikov assault rifle. He went to the third floor, where the teachers' compensation fund has its offices and began shooting.

Among the dead was the woman who heads the fund, which deals with pay raises, bonuses, end of service payment as well as loans.

( August 1, 2002)