Another University Official Kidnaped in West Beirut

The American University of Beirut’s acting vice president for adminstration was kidnaped from his home in mostly Muslim West Beirut overnight, the university said today.

The university said in a statement that a group of gunmen broke into the apartment of George Sayegh, a Lebanese and a Greek Orthodox Christian, in the seaside Chouran neighborhood shortly after midnight and took him away.

The statement included an appeal for his release and noted that Sayegh, who is in his late 40s, suffers “heart trouble and needs to continuously take his medication.”

University personnel have been frequent targets in Lebanon’s 10-year-old civil war. Last year, gunmen shot and killed the university president, Malcolm Kerr, outside his office. Kerr’s predecessor, David Dodge, was kidnaped and held for more than a year before he was freed.

Meanwhile today, Shia and Druze Muslim militias flushed out and captured the last of their rivals in West Beirut. Prime Minister Rashid Karami went to Syria, which sponsored his national unity Cabinet and was reported pressuring him to withdraw its resignation.

There were sporadic gun battles as men of the Shia militia Amal and their Druze allies seized dozens of fighters of the Murabitoun, a Sunni Muslim militia with which they once were allied against Christian warlords.

Witnesses said the search was conducted from house to house in the western sector, and the captives were driven away in jeeps under armed guard.

The sweep ended a savage battle for control of West Beirut that began Tuesday and prompted Karami, a Sunni Muslim, to announce the resignation of his government on Wednesday.

Local radio stations said President Hafez Assad of Syria feared the resignation of Karami’s government would plunge Lebanon into all-out civil war and was pressuring the prime minister to withdraw it.