28 Killed in Beirut as Christian and Muslim Fighting Continues

Rival Christian and Muslim militiamen on Tuesday ended an artillery and rocket battle that pounded Beirut’s residential areas for 12 hours, killing at least 28 people and wounding more than 100, but fighting with other weapons continued.

It was the ninth day of clashes along the Green Line that separates Beirut into Christian and Muslim sectors. After the artillery firing stopped, militiamen battled with heavy machine guns, recoilless cannon and rocket-propelled grenades.

Meanwhile, a well-known Christian, former President Suleiman Franjieh, who is closely allied with Syria, called for the resignation of President Amin Gemayel, also a Christian.

Franjieh told a news conference in north Lebanon that Gemayel was either in collusion with militant leaders of the Christian “Lebanese Forces” militia opposed to reconciliation with Muslims or was afraid to confront them.

“In either case, he is not worthy of being president,” Franjieh said.

Effort to Stop Fighting

Lebanese army commanders met in a new attempt to stop the fighting.

“There is no shelling but the Green Line fighting has not stopped,” Beirut radio said.

A cease-fire attempt by Gemayel failed Monday but a new effort was launched by the commanders of the army’s mostly Shia Muslim 6th Brigade, deployed in Muslim West Beirut, and the Christian-dominated 8th and 10th Brigades, in Christian East Beirut and the mountains east of the capital.

Military sources said the commanders’ involvement was “significant.”

The 12-hour barrage, which was so intense that ambulances could not reach some of the injured until daybreak, subsided around dawn Tuesday. Most of the reported 128 dead and wounded were civilians.

Heavy Civilian Losses

“Militia casualties are nothing compared to the civilian losses overnight,” a police spokesman said.

Some were hit when they tried to flee their apartments for shelters in the Christian and Muslim sectors of the divided capital as the shelling escalated.

“The indiscriminate shelling is war against civilians,” the Christian Voice of Lebanon said. “Militias are not facing each other. They are only shelling from one residential neighborhood into another residential neighborhood.”

Voice of Lebanon said at least 2,500 rounds of artillery and mortar shells and rockets landed in Christian residential neighborhoods. Muslim radio stations reported 600 shells struck the southern Muslim suburbs of the city and others fell on residential areas in mostly Muslim West Beirut.

“The night of May 6 will go into the annals of Lebanon’s civil war as one of the most violent,” said the Christian Voice of Lebanon radio, which blamed Muslim forces for the dramatic escalation.

The latest round of sectarian fighting in Beirut broke out April 28 after a Muslim sweep through a belt of Christian coastal villages in southern Lebanon after Israeli troops withdrew from the area.