Four Palestinians Loyal to Arafat Found Slain in Sidon Refugee Camp

Four Palestinians loyal to PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat were found slain today in a Sidon refugee camp, police said. Notes were pinned to the dead men’s chests saying they had been killed as Israeli collaborators.

It was not clear who killed the men, but the incident sparked fears that fighting among Palestinians, or between Palestinians and other Muslims, might break out in Sidon.

The bodies of the four Palestinians, their hands and legs tied with cords, were found in the trunk and back seat of a car found abandoned at the entrance of the Miye ou Miye refugee camp near Sidon.

Police said the Palestinians had apparently been tortured and beaten before each was shot twice or three times in the head. Notes attached to their chests said: “This is the punishment for every collaborator with Israel.”

3 Victims Identified

Police identified three of the men as Jalal Shadeh, an officer in the PLO’s mainstream Fatah group; Wajih Sweilem, a driver for the Palestinian Red Crescent, the Muslim equivalent of the Red Cross, and Saleh Ismail.

Various Palestinian factions, holding a meeting in the Ein el Hilwa refugee camp immediately after the bodies were found, denounced the killings, saying they were aimed at fueling tension.

A pro-Arafat official in the Palestine Liberation Organization, Anwar abu Sharaf, denied the four had been collaborators and said they were anti-Israeli.

The killings followed an agreement in Damascus between Foreign Minister Abdel-Halim Khaddam of Syria and Sidon leaders to neutralize Arafat’s supporters in the refugee camps of Ein el Hilwa and Miye ou Miye, according to Beirut newspapers.

PLO Returning--Arafat

Syria supports splinter groups in the PLO that fought Arafat’s supporters in eastern and northern Lebanon two years ago. Arafat loyalists also fought Shia Muslim militiamen of the Amal movement in Beirut earlier this year.

Arafat was quoted today by the Arab News, an English-language newspaper based in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, as confirming that the PLO is returning people and weapons to south Lebanon.

Israeli invaders in 1982 forced Arafat’s men to leave Lebanon. He and his forces went to other Arab countries.

In Beirut, efforts to restore security at the American University and its hospital were to get under way today. In the last three years, four employees have been kidnaped and the university’s president, Malcolm Kerr, was assassinated.

Measures to protect the university and hospital were approved Thursday at a meeting of a Syrian-sponsored security committee. Beirut newspapers and radio stations said soldiers and police are to be the only armed presence on or near the campus.