Lebanese Crisis Talks Held as Violence Grows

Renewed fighting broke out today in Beirut, the mountains east of the capital and the southern port of Sidon, prompting crisis talks in Sidon to avoid all-out war between Christian and Muslim militias.

Rival factions blamed each other for the sudden escalation of violence, which quickly spread from Sidon to Beirut and then to the mountains overlooking the capital. Four people were reported killed and 10 wounded.

“It was like a shock. Fighting has spread from one flash point to another,” a Lebanese military source said.

Sidon’s Christian and Muslim religious and political leaders, worried about the escalating violence, met in crisis session to discuss ways of ending the 20-day-old fighting that has already claimed more than 67 lives.

Defense Minister Adel Osseiran, top Lebanese army officers, Christian and Muslim members of Parliament from the Sidon area, and a representative each from the Shia Amal militias and the Christian Falangist Party also attended the Sidon meeting.

U.S. Envoy, Premier Meet

Premier Rashid Karami met U.S. Ambassador Reginald Bartholomew, but both men declined to comment after the brief session at Karami’s office in Muslim West Beirut.

The fighting around Sidon, like that in Beirut, was between Christian and Muslim militiamen, while the battle on the hills east of Beirut pitted Lebanese army troops against Druze Muslim forces.

In the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein el Hilwa east of Sidon, two young men and one woman were killed while at least 10 other people were wounded by Christian artillery shells that fell in the city center, police said.