Britain Evacuates 35 From West Beirut

Britain evacuated 35 Westerners from Muslim West Beirut as a security precaution Sunday after a kidnaped American and two Britons were killed last week in retaliation for the U.S. air raid on Libya.

British Ambassador John Gray said that 32 Britons were evacuated, as were an American, an Irishman and a New Zealander who showed up at the assembly point in West Beirut’s seaside Carlton Hotel and asked to go.

Meanwhile, the second of two planeloads of Americans evacuated from Sudan because of anti-American terrorism arrived in Nairobi, Kenya.

In the Lebanese capital, two police buses and four cars took the evacuees across the so-called Green Line that divides the city into Muslim and Christian sectors.

Jeeps filled with Druze and Muslim militiamen escorted the Westerners to the edge of the Christian sector, where regular police took over.

Christian and Muslim snipers stopped firing from nests in shell-pocked high-rise apartments overlooking the mid-city crossing point as the convoy rolled past.

Gray greeted the evacuees when they arrived at the oceanside British Consulate in the Christian suburb of Jelledib, six miles north of Beirut. The evacuees then dispersed in East Beirut and other Christian areas. Gray told reporters that there were no plans for an evacuation from Lebanon.

Embassy political officer Cameron Hume said that few Americans remained and that most of those have both Lebanese and U.S. citizenship.

The U.S. Embassy moved to East Beirut’s Christian suburb of Aukar, seven miles north of Beirut, in November, 1984, after a suicide car-bomb attack devastated the mission’s West Beirut compound and killed 63 people, including 17 Americans.

Several Italians and Swedes left West Beirut last week after the bodies of Peter Kilburn, librarian at the American University of Beirut, and British teachers John Leigh Douglas and Philip Padfield were found east of Beirut on Thursday.

The body of Kilburn, 62, a San Francisco man missing since Dec. 3, 1984, was flown to the United States on Sunday.

A note found near the three bodies said the men were “executed” by the Arab Revolutionary Cells--a group believed linked to Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal--to avenge Tuesday’s U.S. air strike on Libya.

In Nairobi, meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy reported the arrival of a second planeload of U.S. citizens evacuated from Sudan.

The first group arrived in Nairobi on Friday. The second plane, a chartered jet carrying 130 passengers, mostly Americans, arrived early Sunday. The majority were dependents of American diplomats at the embassy in Khartoum.

The second flight brought to more than 300 the number of foreigners evacuated from neighboring Sudan to Kenya.

Washington decided to evacuate non-essential diplomatic personnel and dependents because of a purported Libyan threat to Americans after the air raid on Libya, Sudan’s northwestern neighbor.

On Tuesday night, a U.S. Embassy communications specialist was critically wounded in Khartoum by an unidentified gunman.