Troops patrol west Beirut

Press, 13 December 1985, Page 6

Troops patrol west Beirut

NZPA-AP Beirut Hundreds of troops and police with armoured cars patrolled the battle-scarred streets of Muslim west Beirut yesterday in a Syrian-backed security operation aimed at ending 22 months of bloody and lawless rule by militias. About 450 soldiers and 400 policemen rolled out of the Sayyar barracks on Verdun Street at dawn. “They are willing to sacrifice all they have to restore security to Beirut and peace of mind to its weary residents,” said the Army chief of staff, MajorGeneral Mahmoud Tay abu-

Dirgham, who commanded the operation. “We’re moving in to enable students to go safely to their schools and people to go safely to work,” he said before the regulars set off to try to restore law and order to west Beirut. A police spokesman said that the . patrols had disarmed a handful of gunmen who did not abide by orders from their leaders to lay down their arms. But there were no serious confrontations.

Druse and Shi’ite Muslim Amal militiamen dismantled some sandbagged emplacements, lowered flags,

and stashed some of their weapons in their shuttered offices. Some militiamen were seen in the streets, still with rifles and pistols, while security patrols were elsewhere. Some of the security force units just ignored the gunmen. A joint “militia police force” of 300 heavily armed Amal and Druse fighters with truck-mounted anti-air-craft machine-guns took up positions in six key areas of west Beirut as the security operation got under way. The Muslim half of the Lebanese capital, where more than 650,000 people

live, has been plagued by kidnappings, hold-ups, racketeering, and militia feuds since Druse and Shi’ite Muslim militias wrested control from Christian units of the Lebanese Army in February, 1984. Lawlessness reached a peak last month when the Druse Progressive Socialist Party and the Shi’ite Amal militia fought each other in the streets for five days. Syria arranged a ceasefire between the two factions. The security plan is the sixth since the militia takeover. All the previous ones collapsed amid gun-fire.