Truce buys tenuous peace in Beirut

Press, 19 February 1987, Page 8

Truce buys tenuous peace in Beirut

By

HALA JABER

NZPA-Reuter Beirut Explosions and the rattle of machine-gun fire rang out across west Beirut yesterday, with gunmen still roaming the city’s Muslim sector despite a ceasefire ar-

ranged by a senior Syrian intelligence officer.

Local radios said a truce pushed through on Tuesday night by the Syrian military intelligence chief in Lebanon, Brigadier Ghazi Kanaan, had provided for the withdrawal of both Shi’ite Muslim fighters and their Leftist foes.

But gunmen swathed in ammunition 1 belts ’ and armed with Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-pro-pelled grenade launchers still held street corner positions, witnesses said.

For more than 30 hours, the Syrian-backed

Shi’ite Amal militia had fought a loose coalition of Leftist groups, including the tiny pro-Soviet Communist Party and the larger, Druse-led Progressive Socialist Party (P.S.P.).

Despite an overnight lull in the close-quarter battles, there was still no official casualty toll. Eyewitness accounts, hospital sources and radios indicated that more than 30

people may have been killed, many of them civilians, and at least 150 others injured.

In some areas the two sides were only a few metres apart, with battlelines running haphazardly through narrow alleyways and markets.

“We can’t tell one side from another,” said a garbage collector, one of the few non-combatants who dared to venture out. “We don't know which militia

controls what any more.” One resident added: “My home has become a Green Line between the militiamen. We don’t have just one Green Line in this city — we have hundreds now.”

Beirut’s official Green Line is a swathe of shell holes and burnt-out apartment blocks which snakes across the city, dividing it into Christian and Muslim zones.

West Beirut’s militias are allied against Rightwing Christian forces, but Tuesday’s internecine bat-

tles in the western enclave appear to represent a serious challenge to Syria’s role in Lebanon and its militia ally, Amal. Although the Commun-

ists and the P.S.P. proclaim support for Damascus, they have barely concealed their opposition to Amal’s 18-week siege of Palestinian camps