Muslim Forces Take Virtual Control of 2 Beirut Camps

Shia Muslim forces took virtual control of two embattled Palestinian refugee camps Saturday and clashed with defenders of a third camp containing thousands of terrified civilians.

Police reported seven people were killed and 30 wounded in fighting Saturday. The casualty toll from a week of heavy fighting in the capital stood at 345 dead and about 1,700 wounded. Lebanese Red Cross officials expect those figures to climb once they are allowed to enter the camps.

A Palestinian source confirmed reports from the Shia Muslim militia Amal that the Sabra and Chatilla camps on the southern edge of Beirut fell to Shia forces supported by the Lebanese army’s 6th Brigade, a largely Shia force.

“There are some pockets of resistance, but militarily Sabra and Chatilla have fallen,” said the source, who requested anonymity.

Only sporadic grenade and small-arms fire could be heard Saturday afternoon from the two camps, where several hundred Palestinians and Lebanese Muslim were slain in September, 1982, in a massacre by Christian Falangist militiamen.

“Snipers and grenade throwers emerge from sewers, from ditches, from tunnels. They fire and vanish,” an army sergeant said of the Sabra fighting.

The Palestinian source said Amal militiamen tried to storm Borj el Brajne overnight behind tank fire from the 6th Brigade. He said the camp’s estimated 3,000 defenders halted the thrust with sustained barrages of armor-piercing rockets and machine-gun fire.

“We have the weapons and the manpower and we will not give in to this barbaric massacre,” a Palestinian officer said in a telephone interview from one of the camps.

Between 10,000 and 15,000 civilians were reported hiding in tunnels and underground bomb shelters in Borj el Brajne--the biggest of the three camps near the airport--while only a “token” number remained in Sabra and Chatilla.

A ranking Amal official visiting the battlefront said that most of the Palestinians had switched firing positions from the Sabra and Chatilla camps to Borj el Brajne--1 1/2 miles to the south--through an elaborate network of underground tunnels they built years ago when Sabra was a power base for Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat.

“They have a whole city below the ground down there,” he said.

Palestinians escaping from the fallen camps spoke of massacres at the hands of the Shia militiamen, but their reports could not be independently confirmed.

Beirut Airport, which closed Thursday after coming under attack during the fighting, reopened Saturday. Airport officials said they were assured by both sides that the airport’s perimeter would not be shelled again. Four passenger jets left Beirut during the day Saturday.

Meanwhile, the Muslim Voice of the Nation radio said Amal militiamen stormed and captured a Palestinian refugee camp outside the ancient city of Baalbek in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley.

Other reports from mainly Shia Baalbek said Amal fighters were kept from entering the camps by Syrian troops and tanks.

The reports said three Palestinian guerrillas were killed over the previous two days of fighting with Amal forces.