Militia Shells Gemayel Palace; He Won’t Quit

Pro-Syrian Muslim militiamen shelled President Amin Gemayel’s mountain palace and battled government forces in and around Beirut today as Gemayel ignored calls for his resignation.

The 16th straight day of military pressure on Gemayel came as Palestinian guerrillas and Shia Muslim militiamen clashed in southern Beirut’s battered Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Chatilla.

In Beirut, army gunners sent shells crashing into the seafront Ain Mreisseh neighborhood and American University of Beirut’s tree-lined campus in mostly Muslim West Beirut.

University officials canceled classes and sent students home. Mortar rounds exploded near another school a few blocks from the Green Line, a no-man’s land of bombed-out buildings that divides Beirut into its Christian and Muslim sectors, wounding the school’s principal.

Retaliatory Shelling

The shelling of West Beirut was apparently in retaliation for the recent killing of two soldiers and the wounding of a woman in Christian East Beirut by Muslim gunners.

Several shells and rockets fired by Druze Muslim gunners in the Shouf Mountains overlooking Beirut smashed around Gemayel’s palace at Baabda, five miles southeast of Beirut. The palace was not hit.

Officials said the president’s work was not interrupted. The officials said Gemayel discussed the “deteriorating security situation” with army commander Michel Aoun, but details of their talks were not released.