Shells in Beirut Kill 21, Wreck Jet at Airport

Hundreds of shells slammed into Christian and Muslim neighborhoods in and around Beirut on Wednesday, killing at least 21 people and destroying an airliner at the airport on the third straight day of artillery battles between rival militias.

The Middle East Airlines Boeing 727 was hit only minutes before passengers for Jordan were due to board, radio stations said. Witnesses said the craft was reduced to a heap of molten metal by phosphorous incendiary shells. Airport traffic was halted.

Wednesday’s bombardment extended to villages up to 15 miles from the capital. Radio stations said at least 11 died in Christian areas and 10 in Muslim-controlled West Beirut.

In the northern city of Tripoli, the toll from Tuesday’s car-bomb blast rose to 50 dead after nine people died of wounds, security sources said. More than 160 people were hurt in the explosion.

Militia Leader Killed

Among the dead was Sheik Zakariya Rashid, an official of the Sunni Muslim fundamentalist Jundullah (Soldiers of God) militia. Its local leader, Sheik Kanaan Naji, was wounded.

The Tripoli bomb was the latest in a six-day wave of car-bombings that has killed more than 140 people and wounded about 400.

Scores of people have been killed in the last three days of Christian-Muslim fighting.

Meanwhile, the Swiss head of the International Red Cross mission in the southern city of Sidon was freed in Tyre on Wednesday after being held by a solitary gunman for about 36 hours.

Stefan Jaquemet, 29, had been held by the brother of a Lebanese seized by the Israeli occupation army when it raided a Shia Muslim village in southern Lebanon last March, a Red Cross spokesman said.