Snipers fire on supplies convoy

Press, 8 April 1987, Page 10

Snipers fire on supplies convoy

NZPA-Reuter Beirut Relief supplies have reached the besieged Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila, but sniper fire killed one man and wounded two as they helped to unload the convoy. In spite of a Syriansponsored truce, Shi’ite Muslim Amal snipers shot all three in the camp yesterday after five trucks carrying 40 tonnes of food, clothes and blankets supplied by Kuwait entered the camp, Palestinian sources said. It was the first convoy in five weeks to reach the Beirut camp, where 3200 refugees have been under siege from Amal militiamen for five months. Foreign medical workers have described living conditions at Shatila as even worse than in the larger Bourj el-Brajneh camp, where for the last few weeks Amal has let women out on foot to buy food. More than 30 have been killed by sniper fire.

A ceasefire was announced at Syrian military headquarters in Beirut on Monday, after Arab and international pressure to end the fighting around the two Beirut

camps, where nearly 900 people have been killed since September.

Palestinian sources said both camps were calm on Monday night. More than 7000 Syrian troops were deployed in Muslim west Beirut in February to halt militia battles. They control roads near the refugee camps but have not intervened in the fighting. Syrian military observers have helped negotiate safe conduct for relief convoys to the camps, with varying success.

“I want to thank (Syrian) President Hafez al-Assad ... and Syrian officials 'in Beirut who helped us,” said a relief official, Abdel Ghani Asho, after the Shatila operation. On previous occasions, Amal has demanded and received an equal share of the supplies to give to Shi’ites.

Syria has backed Amal in its two-year campaign against the Palestinians, supplying it with tanks and other weapons. Amal says it wants to stop guerrillas regaining the power they had before the Israeli invasion in 1982. The leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Yasser Arafat,

says Amal is bent on destroying the refugee camps. It is still uncertain whether the ceasefire, an? nounced a day after Arab Foreign Ministers discussed the camps war at a meeting in Tunis, heralds an end to the conflict Mr Arafat’s Fatah faction played no public part in negotiations among Syrian officers, Amal officials and representatives of the pro-Syrlan Palestine National Salva- . tion Front (P.N.S.F.). Amal said blockades of the Beirut camps and Rashidiyeh in the south, would be lifted fully only when Palestinians withdraw from all positions they had captured in hills east of Sidon. A P.N.S.F. spokesman denied that this was part of the agreement and a Syrian officer supervising the Shatila convoy would say only “Sidon after? wards” when reporters queried him. In unrelated violence, artillery duels between Christian-led Lebanese Army troops and Druse militiamen shook hills near Beirut yesterday for the first time this year. The police had no word on casualties or on the cause of the flare-up.