35 Killed as Shells Shatter Beirut Truce

Muslim and Christian gunners rained shells and rockets on Beirut’s residential neighborhoods today in the worst random bombardment in four months. Police said 35 people were killed and 160 wounded.

The battles erupted at dusk Wednesday and raged through the night.

A cease-fire was called at daybreak today but collapsed six hours later, and the duels with heavy artillery, multi-barreled rocket launchers and tank cannon resumed at midday.

The hostilities shattered a 2-week-old truce between Lebanese militias that was called for Ramadan, Islam’s holy month of fasting.

Ambulances raced through the streets with sirens wailing as fighting raged well into the afternoon. Hospitals issued urgent appeals for blood donations, and schools and universities on both sides of the dividing Green Line sent their students home.

Most Casualties Civilians

Police said 28 people were killed and 100 wounded in the exchanges from dusk Wednesday to dawn today. Seven others were killed and 60 wounded since midday, police said.

One Lebanese soldier was killed in the fighting, but the rest of those killed and most of the wounded were civilians, police said.

Police said the militias used 155-millimeter howitzers, U.S.-made M-48 tank cannon and Soviet-made multi-barreled rocket launchers. At least 20 residential districts in and around Beirut were hit, at times with as many as 30 rounds a minute, police said.

Each side accused the other of starting the fighting that came on the eve of scheduled visit by newly elected Maronite Catholic Patriarch Mar Nassrallah Butros Sfeir to the Muslim sector.

Was to Meet With Mufti

Sfeir, spiritual head of the politically dominant Maronite community, was scheduled to meet in West Beirut with Sunni Muslim Grand Mufti Sheik Hassan Khaled.

The bombardment, however, forced the 66-year-old patriarch to call off the meeting that some people had heralded as a potential breakthrough in efforts to halt the 11-year-old civil war.

No Maronite patriarch had visited West Beirut since the 1975 outbreak of the sectarian conflict that has claimed more than 100,000 lives.

The latest hostilities erupted a few hours after President Amin Gemayel, a Maronite, said in a speech that “all mini-states” set up by Christian and Muslim militias will not be able to survive.