Women, children feared trapped in bunker

Press, 26 July 1976, Page 6

Women, children feared trapped in bunker

NZPA-Reuter

Beirut

Right-wing Christian artillery has been pounding a big Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut where some 500 old people, women, and children were feared yesterday to be trapped in an underground bunker.

A Palestinian spokesman said the shelter was beneath the wreckage of a big building on the boundary of the Tel Al-Zaatar camp. The building was shelled by Right-wing. forces who have laid siege to the camp for more than a month. Although first reports said the entire 500 had been killed. Palestinian., later said that 15 children had been saved, and that others were thought to be alive. The camp’s defenders were struggling to dig a tunnel through the wreckage to rescue those still entombed. Continued fire by the attacking Christian forces was hampering rescue operations, a Palestinian spokesman said.

The fighting around Tel Al-Zaatar also threatened the prospects for a cease-fire that was to have gone into effect yesterday, the 53rd in Lebanon’s bitter 16-month-old civil war. Mr Ziad Abdel Fattah, a spokesman for the Palestinian news agency, W.A.F.A., said Rightist artillery had begun shelling on Saturday afternoon, blocking exits from the shelter. Eighty minutes later, the building had collapsed. Mortor and howitzer fire continued to pound the wrecked building even after it collapsed, preventing rescue parties from reaching the shelter. Those who succeeded in saving the 15 children reported hearing cries for help

from those still trapped beneath piles of rubble. Tel Al-Zaatar and the surrounding Leftist-held area had long been a symbol of resistance for the Palestine commandos and their Leftwing Lebanese allies. It held a commanding position overlooking Christian east Beirut, and its defiance of the Christian siege prevented Right-wing forces from taking complete control of the eastern suburbs, which lie between the capital and the Maronite Christian heartlands to the north-east. Mr Abdel Fattah said that, despite pleas from Palestinian leaders, neither Arab League officials nor the International Red Cross had been able to help the trapped refu-

The barrage on Tel AlZaatar coincided with an announcement by the Arab League’s liaison officer, Mr Hassan Sabri AI-Khoii, that 11 factions in the civil war had agreed to the new ceasefire. The truce —should it go into effect—would be linked to an extension of the buffer zone between east and west Beirut held by Arab League peace-keeping forces. The truce force, from four Arab countries, planned to take over the enure confrontation line dividing Beirut and later to reopen t..e city’s harbour and airport for use by all sides in the civil war. But Dr Kholi would not say whether he thought the ceasefire would prove effec-