13 Die in Lebanon on Anniversary of War

The 10th anniversary of the events that opened Lebanon’s civil war was marked Saturday with five people killed in artillery fire in Sidon, eight people dying in an attack on a village in southern Lebanon and militias battling in the streets of Beirut.

The government-controlled Beirut radio blamed the “Israeli enemy” for the deaths of eight people in a “massacre” at Yohmor, a Shia Muslim village about 25 miles east of Sidon.

In Tel Aviv, the Israeli military command denied its troops were involved in the killings in any way and said they only entered the village to investigate the incident. “The Israel Defense Forces were not involved in this in any way,” a military spokesman said.

Israel television quoted unidentified sources in the South Lebanon Army, an Israeli-backed militia, as saying the killings were related to a feud between the Shia Muslim Amal militia and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party over control of the village.

Radio stations said most of those killed were members of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, which has claimed responsibility for two suicide car bombings that have killed 14 Israeli soldiers since March 1.

Meanwhile, in eastern Lebanon, journalists reported that a pilotless drone aircraft exploded in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley. Members of the Amal militia said the drone, which crashed near the village of Hizzine, appeared to be an American-made craft. The Israeli military denied that one of its drones was missing or downed.

The shooting in Beirut erupted between Muslim factions, which led Christian factions to open up, too, in the belief that the Muslim gunfire was aimed at them.

The exchange was typical of the fighting since April 13, 1975, when open warfare started with an assassination attempt on Pierre Gemayel--the founder of the Christian Falangist Party and the late father of Lebanese President Amin Gemayel--and a revenge attack on a bus that left 28 dead.

Since 1975, the on-and-off factional strife has claimed more than 100,000 lives, mostly civilians. Hundreds of thousands more have been left homeless by the fighting.

Newspapers noted the anniversary with commentaries and editorial cartoons.

One drawing in the Arabic-language newspaper Al Anwar showed Lebanon nailed to a cross and dripping blood. The rightist French-language paper Le Reveil said the war brought an end to “the Lebanon . . . of confidence . . . of fraternity.” That Lebanon, it said, “cannot be resurrected.”

In Sidon, reporters said artillery barrages from the Lebanese Forces, a key Christian militia, poured steadily into two Palestinian refugee camps throughout the morning, halted at lunchtime, then started again in midafternoon. Smoke rose from the camps in late afternoon and artillery blasts could still be heard as darkness fell. Random shells also reportedly fell in the city of Sidon itself.

Hospital officials reported five people killed and more than 37 wounded in Saturday’s fighting, bringing the toll in over three weeks of factional fighting to 71 dead and more than 320 injured.

They said Palestinian guerrillas and Muslim militiamen fired back on Christian villages in the hills east of the camps.

The fighting started March 29, two days after Christian militiamen in the region took sides with pro-Israeli rebels in Gemayel’s Falangist Party against the party’s tilt towards Syria.

The battles persisted despite a reported agreement by the rebels to withdraw militia reinforcements sent to the Sidon area from other Christian sectors of Lebanon.

In Beirut, residents said Amal militiamen and Druze forces battled for a half-hour after arguing over which side would use metal containers as barricades to block off the area from Christian East Beirut.