Guns silent in Lebanon

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34146, 6 May 1976, Page 17

Guns silent in Lebanon

eV Z P A.•Reuter—Copyright/ BEIRUT, May 5. Fighting subsided in the battered Lebanese capital last night after Palestinian troops had moved into positions between Right and Left-wing forces confronting each other in the port area.

Regulars of the Syrianbased Palestine Liberation Army have entered the strategically important area to create a buffer zone, according to Palestinian sources. No details have been given of the number of troops or of their precise positions in the area, which has been reduced to ruins by intensive mortar and artillery barrages. An earlier attempt to create a buffer zone failed when P.L.A. forces were pulled back as the fighting between the two sides

erupted with renewed ferocity. Right-wing forces hold most of the port area, but they have been under severe pressure from Leftist positions on the west. The port is the Right’s main outlet to the sea The silence of the big guns last night gave rise to a glimmer of hope that the present truce — one of about 3C theoretical ceasefires in the year-long Lebanese civil war — would finally hold. Poiice sources said last night that 60 people were killed and 100 injured in yesterday’s fighting. Fifty bodies, the victims of earlier battles, were recovered.