24-hour curfew in Beirut

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34021, 9 December 1975, Page 21

24-hour curfew in Beirut

(N.Z.P A. -Reuter—Copyright) BEIRUT, Dec. 8. Beirut today faces a 24-hour curfew for the first time in eight months of civil strife as the Government struggles to steer the country away from the path of self-destruction. But even as the Interior Minister (Mr Camille Chamoun) announced the curfew order last night, the city shuddered to the noise of rocket blasts and automatic weapons fire from rival fictions fighting in the streets. Observers seriously doubt whether security forces can impose an effective curfew on the gangs of Left-wing and Right-wing gunmen who have paralysed this cosmopolitan crossroads of the Middle East. In theory, the city is already under a 10-hour night curfew’, but the continuing sound of gunfire was an emphatic reminder of its ineffectiveness. The Cabinet will meet in

emergency session today to discuss the most recent relapse in the security situation, which has taken more than 100 lives in the last 48 hours.

During the week-end there was a sudden collapse of the patchy but encouraging period of peace which Lebanon enjoyed for a week after President Suleiman Franjieh and the Prime Minister (Mr Karami) put forward a tentative programme for national reconciliation. After a rash of street-cor-ner murders on Saturday by : Moslems and Christians, street fighting erupted yesterday in the city centre and several trouble spots in the suburbs. “Flying roadblocks’’ — the device used by Moslems and Christians to abduct passersby of the opposite faith — reappeared in many streets, including some middle-class areas which avoided most of the earlier violence. There was also serious trouble in Zahle, a picturesque mountain resort 50 kilometres east of Beirut, where rival groups used mortars and rockets as well as assault rifles, which are the standard equipment of Lebanese street fighters. In a further blow to Government efforts to find a so-

lution to the crisis, Leftist parties announced last night they would boycott the mediation organisation, which is called the Higher Co-ordi-nation Committee.