Violence Rocks Beirut After Bid to Kill Gemayel

Three days after the signing of a Lebanese peace accord, simmering rivalries in Lebanon’s Christian community exploded Tuesday in a series of battles after the country’s president and a Christian militia leader escaped assassination.

Unidentified gunmen ambushed President Amin Gemayel’s white Mercedes-Benz limousine near the town of Zalka, northeast of Beirut, according to Beirut radio stations. The 43-year-old president was not in the car at the time, but six of his personal bodyguards were wounded. Two other guards were said to be missing.

Three Cars Damaged

The bulletproof limousine was strafed by machine-gun fire, witnesses said, and three escort cars were severely damaged.

Earlier, Assad Shaftari, the intelligence chief of the Lebanese Forces, the main Christian militia, was traveling in his car in East Beirut when it was hit by rocket-propelled grenades. Shaftari was not hurt, but an aide was killed in the attack and another was seriously wounded.

Shaftari, 29, was a member of the Lebanese Forces delegation led by the militia’s commander, Elie Hobeika, that took part in the signing of the tripartite peace agreement last Saturday.

The agreement--signed by Hobeika, by Nabih Berri of the Shia Muslim militia Amal, and by Walid Jumblatt of the Druze militia--calls for sweeping political reforms and an end to Lebanon’s factional fighting within a year. It is supposed to lead to the formation of a new national coalition Cabinet to oversee the armistice and to disband all militias.

Believes He Was Target

Michel Samahaa, an aide to Hobeika, said in Damascus that Hobeika was riding with Shaftari only minutes before the attack. Hobeika, he added, believes that it was directed against him.

According to Samahaa, Hobeika believes that the Shaftari ambush, carried out by 30 masked men firing automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, had been arranged by bodyguards of Gemayel, a Maronite Catholic.

A communique released by the Lebanese Forces said that Shaftari’s bodyguards exchanged fire with the ambushers and that an undetermined number of assailants were killed or wounded.

After the two attacks, prolonged gun battles erupted in areas of Christian East Beirut between various Christian factions. The fighting was described by residents as the heaviest in five years, but it did not shatter the truce that went into effect hours earlier along the Green Line separating Beirut’s Christian and Muslim sectors.

4 Killed, 19 Injured

Eyewitnesses who did not wish to be identified told the Associated Press in Beirut that at least four people were killed and 19 injured in the fighting.

Gemayel ordered the Lebanese army’s 8th Brigade deployed in Zalka and in Metn province, where the presidential palace and the president’s family home are located.

Former Lebanese President Camille Chamoun, 85, said he visited the presidential palace after hearing of the ambush and met for 30 minutes with Gemayel. “I congratulated the president on his escape,” he told reporters.

As the fighting erupted, the Syrian government, which brokered the peace agreement, warned again that it would deal harshly with any party that attempts to upset the accord.

The clashes in the Christian areas of the capital appear to signal the renewal of a power struggle, beginning last March, for dominance among Lebanon’s 1.4 million Christians. There are also deep divisions within the Christian community over parts of the peace agreement that would end the Christian dominance of Lebanon, which was institutionalized in the 1943 political compromise that established the modern state of Lebanon.

Power, Influence Lost

The Lebanese Forces militia rose up against Gemayel’s rule in March, and since then the president has lost much of his power and influence.

Gemayel, who publicly opposed the Syrian-sponsored peace agreement, is scheduled to travel to Syria on Thursday to confer with Syrian leaders on implementing the plan. He had complained not only about the substance of the plan and the Christians’ loss of power but also that he was not consulted throughout the three months of negotiations leading to the agreement.

In addition to Gemayel, several other key Christian leaders, among them former Presidents Chamoun and Suleiman Franjieh, have openly condemned the Damascus agreement.

Syria’s government and party newspapers have kept up a steady stream of thinly veiled warnings to the bickering Lebanese to compose their differences and uphold the agreement.

“He who stands against the agreement is standing against Lebanon,” said the newspaper Al Baath, the organ of Syria’s ruling Baath Party. “We will not permit any internal or external force to abort this agreement.”