Militia Seizes Hundreds of Palestinians

Shia Muslim militiamen rolled through two Palestinian refugee camps today, rounding up hundreds of men while women and children fled, police said.

Palestinian sources said 70 wounded men were dragged from a hospital and killed, but the report could not be confirmed.

In Christian East Beirut, rescue workers searched for more bodies in the debris in the Sin el Fil neighborhood where a car bomb killed 60 people and injured about 190 Wednesday.

Shia Amal militiamen pushed through the fallen Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps rounding up and arresting Palestinian men and youths and sending women and children fleeing. Other Amal units launched a new attack against the Borj el Brajne camp--the only one still under Palestinian control.

126 Killed in Fighting

At least 126 people have been killed and 840 wounded since the battle for the three camps began.

Palestinians arrested at Sabra and Chatilla were marched through Muslim neighborhoods of West Beirut before being herded into trucks and jeeps and taken to a makeshift jail--an unfinished 40-floor building near the Beirut Green Line that also serves as an Amal militia base.

Witnesses said they saw Amal militiamen pushing their Palestinian prisoners out of the trucks, slapping and beating them on the way. Many were tied to each other and some were blindfolded, the witnesses said.

Pro-Syrian Palestinian gunners entrenched in the Muslim Druze-held mountains east of Beirut responded to the Amal advance on Borj el Brajne with missiles and long-range artillery, hoping to relieve the pressure on the besieged camp.

Amal justified its campaign against the Palestinians by charging that the Palestine Liberation Organization plans to take control of southern Lebanon when Israel completes its withdrawal. Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to oust the PLO.