Shia Muslim Force Policing Looted Areas : Amal Seeks to Restore Order in South Lebanon; Syria Spurs Talks

Shia Muslim militiamen took over a belt of Christian villages in southern Lebanon on Saturday in an effort to quell revenge looting. However, sporadic fighting between rightist Christians and a Muslim-led alliance continued in the area, near the port of Sidon.

Nabih Berri, leader of Amal, the Shias’ key militia, and also a national Cabinet minister, said at a Beirut news conference that his men had taken over 14 villages east of Sidon. About 500 militiamen are involved, Amal officials in Sidon said.

The commander of Lebanon’s army, Gen. Michel Aoun--whose forces control only a small percentage of the country--reportedly went to Syria to discuss efforts to deploy Beirut government troops in and around Sidon as a way of ending the sectarian warfare. An estimated 17,000 Christian families have been displaced in this latest round of violence.

The army’s 12th Brigade had been sent to Sidon on Feb. 16, after Israel’s withdrawal from the city and its surrounding area. The troops were reinforced by armored personnel carriers two weeks ago but have yet to go far outside their barracks.

Syria, whose army is the largest in the Mideast after Israel’s, is the main power broker in Lebanon, and Aoun’s mission to Damascus was considered important. Syria has publicly pledged to help the government of Lebanon’s relatively moderate Christian president, Amin Gemayel, end 10 years of sectarian strife.

Government sources said Syrian President Hafez Assad dispatched his national security adviser, Maj. Gen. Mohammed Kholi, to Beirut for talks with Gemayel.

Message From Assad

The sources said Kholi flew by helicopter to the Presidential Palace in suburban Baabda and delivered an undisclosed message to Gemayel from Assad.

Christian residents who remained in the Sidon area welcomed Amal. “We fear the Palestinians a lot,” a priest said.

Amal roadblocks prevented access to villages ravaged Friday by hundreds of Palestinians from adjacent refugee camps that had suffered heavy casualties and damage in five weeks of fighting with the Christians.

Sunni Muslim troops northeast of Sidon exchanged sporadic sniper and rocket fire with Christian forces, and hospital officials reported at least seven people wounded. Other reports said there was one death when Christian gunners fired a shell into Aabra, one of the Muslim-occupied villages.

The Sunni fighters turned back cars with loot from Christian villages. “There was too much stealing,” a Sunni soldier said.

Muslim gunmen had looted and set dozens of homes ablaze after entering the villages Friday, but no large-scale fighting was reported. Most residents had already left by the time the invaders arrived.

In East Beirut on Saturday, the Christians dominant there conducted a one-day strike to protest the government’s inability to control the Muslims’ thrust into the southern communities. About 200 students marched on the Defense Ministry, calling on the army to take action.

“The army we have been waiting for failed to show up,” said George Adwan, secretary general of the rightist Lebanese Forces militia coalition, which pulled 400 of its men out of the Sidon area Wednesday, leaving many villages virtually defenseless.

“The burning and looting of Christian villages around the city of Sidon takes Lebanon back to the worst days of the civil war,” said a Beirut newspaper, the Daily Star, “days it had been hoped that were gone for good.”