Lebanon’s Gemayel Narrowly Escapes Death in Shell Attack

Lebanese President Amin Gemayel narrowly escaped death today when his Beirut palace was shelled, setting his private wing and office on fire while he ate lunch down the hall, a palace spokesman reported.

Half an hour after the shelling, a shaken Gemayel left by helicopter for Larnaca, Cyprus, to board a plane for Damascus for a two-day summit with Syrian President Hafez Assad. Gemayel reportedly will seek Syrian military intervention to end 10 days of bloody fighting between Palestinians and Shia Muslims.

The palace spokesman, who declined to be identified, said Gemayel was eating lunch in a dining room next to his office when several direct hits from artillery shells set the presidential wing of the palace ablaze.

State television reported that Gemayel was showered with pieces of glass when the shell hit, but was not hurt. The network broadcast film of the devastated rooms, but Gemayel was not shown. It was the second time in 10 days the palace has been hit.

State radio said: “Damage was extensive. Firemen, civil defense squads and the presidential guards are trying to put out the fire and remove debris.”

The conference room on the second floor of the two-story palace was wrecked by a shell, and several others crashed around the hilltop building in suburban Baabda, five miles east of Beirut, the palace spokesman added.

He would not say where the barrage came from.

Police later said that the palace was hit by 120-millimeter artillery and that two shells crashed a few yards from the main entrance to U.S. Ambassador Reginald Bartholomew’s residence in the neighboring suburb of Yarze. No casualties or damage were reported. Bartholomew was out of the country.

Radio stations said Gemayel plans to ask Assad to send the Syrian army back to Beirut to snuff out the Shia-Palestinian confrontation and end Lebanon’s 10-year-old Muslim-Christian civil war.

The palace bombardment came almost two hours after 13 shells crashed into Beirut’s International Airport while passengers were boarding an airliner bound for Europe.

As the rounds slammed in, travelers sprinted to the terminal for cover. But airport officials reported no casualties or damage and the plane later took off.

Shia militiamen and armored units of a mainly Shia army unit pounded a Palestinian refugee camp on Beirut’s southern edge with mortars and tank fire today, officials said.

Palestinians responded to the Shia assault on Borj el Brajne camp with machine guns and armor-piercing rockets, police said.

Palestinians said they were keeping Shias from pushing into three besieged camps that had a population of 120,000 before the fighting began.

Police reported 19 people killed and 48 wounded overnight, raising the toll to at least 408 dead and 1,803 wounded.

The Syrian army left Beirut during Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to crush the Palestinians. But Syria has maintained an estimated 30,000 soldiers in northern and eastern Lebanon under a peacekeeping mandate from the Arab League.