Soviets pull out of Beirut

Press, 5 October 1985, Page 10

Soviets pull out of Beirut

NZPA-Reuter Beirut Soviet Embassy staff quit Beirut last evening (N.Z. Time) after the kidnap-mur-der of one of their colleagues. s A Reuter reporter saw about 70 Soviet staff and wives of Soviet residents leave for Damascus in three buses, apparently on their way to Moscow. A Muslim group, which

killed a Soviet consular secretary, Arkady Katkov, on Thursday, still holds three Soviet officials seized with him in west Beirut two days earlier. The evacuees — about half the 150-strong Soviet community in Beirut — left with the embassy under threat of a bomb attack. Druse militiamen in four Soviet-built T 54 tanks and

trucks mounting anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns guarded the compound. An anonymous caller on Thursday told Soviet diplomats to vacate the embassy by 1 a.m. today (N.Z. time) or it would be “demolished over their heads.” The kidnappers, Muslim extremists calling themselves the “Islamic Liberation Organisation — ibn al-

Walid Forces,” have threatened to kill the three surviving hostages unless militias allied to Syria stop attacks on fundamentalists in Tripoli. The two sides signed a cease-fire agreement yesterday in Damascus, to go into effect at 9 a.m. today (NZT) and pledged to hand over heavy weapons to Syrian troops who ring the city.