Palestinian success repulsed

Press, 30 May 1985, Page 6

Palestinian success repulsed

NZPA-AP Beirut Encircled Palestinian guerrillas recaptured key positions from Shi’ite Muslim forces around west Beirut’s Sabra refugee camp yesterday but they were later pushed out after a fierce four-hour bombardment. Akef Haidar, head of the Shi’ite Amal militia's politburo, said that the Palestinians had taken an old people’s home on the edge of the camp in an early morning sneak attack after Palestinian sympathisers drugged tea served to some of the garrison, then “slaughtered them like sheep.”

Amal officials said that Palestinian fighters, infiltrating through a network of underground tunnels, had struck at the home’s main gate and assailed it amid gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades. Palestinian spokesmen dismissed Amal’s drugging assertion and said that their men had fought their way into the seven-storey building, which overlooks Sabra and the neighbouring Shatila camp. A Palestinian spokesman reached by telephone said, “Why would we kill them? We would have taken them prisoner to trade them for thousands of Palestinians Amal is holding. They were

killed fighting for control of the home.” The surprise Palestinian push was seen as a bid to take pressure off their comrades in the nearby Bourj el-Brajneh camp when it came under heavy Shi’ite attack yesterday. By seizing part of the building, the Palestinians threatened Amal’s main supply lines into Sabra and Shatila. An estimated 3000 fighters are in the sprawling Bourj el-Brajneh camp, the largest in Beirut, which has been under attack for nine days. “They have retaken the home after bombarding it and the camp for four

hours," the Palestinian spokesman said.

Some of the home's 600 patients were shifted out soon after the battle of the camps erupted on May 19. Officials said that the' rest were removed later. Amal unleashed the offensive against the camps to smash the P.L.O. chairman, Yasser Arafat’s, attempt to rebuild the power base in Lebanon he lost in Israel's invasion in 1982. The police reported that 20 people had been killed and 62 wounded in yesterday’s fighting. That did not include casualties claimed by Amal and the Palestinians in the clashes around the Sabra old folks’ home.

The police count raised the known casualty toll to 389 killed and 1755 wounded.

The guerrillas' mobility inside the camps, particularly using the tunnels they built years ago, has countered the Shi’ites' vastly superior firepower which includes tanks. The Palestinian counterattack in Sabra was launched after they apparently mustered reinforcements from the other camps through the tunnels during a two-day comparative lull in the fighting. Palestinian gunners in the Chotif mountains east of Beirut, aided their besieged fighters in the camps by bombarding Shi’ite-popu-lated areas with rockets.