Relief Convoy to Beirut Refugees Fired On; 1 Dead

A member of an Iranian delegation participating in a U.N. relief effort was killed Friday after Shia Muslim militiamen opened fire on a U.N. convoy supplying food for starving residents of a beseiged Palestinian refugee camp.

The Iranian Embassy identified the victim as Moussa Hammoud. It said in a statement that he was part of a delegation sent by Iran’s leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to help end the fighting at the beseiged Borj el Brajne camp and the nearby Chatilla camp on the southern outskirts of the Lebanese capital.

Police said Hammoud was riding inside an ambulance that was accompanying two U.N. trucks into Borj el Brajne, which has been under siege by the Muslim militia Amal for 15 weeks. There have been reports that many of the camp’s estimated 35,000 residents are malnourished and that some are near starvation.

But by early this morning, another convoy carrying food was at last allowed into Borj el Brajne.

On Friday, the ambulance in which Hammoud was riding managed to enter the camp as the gunmen opened fire with automatic weapons, police said. “The Iranian delegate was hit in the head and died later,” they said.

The violence reportedly broke out after an angry Amal militiaman stopped the convoy as it drove up a road to the entrance of the barricaded refugee camp.

Witnesses said the soldier, who wanted to stop the mercy mission because his brother had been killed fighting the Palestinians, shot out a tire on one of the vehicles.

Amal officers took him aside, the witnesses said, and tried to calm him, but he returned and shot out three more tires as firing with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades broke out, trapping the trucks.

Amal officers and Iranian officials, who have tried to mediate a truce, then called for a cease-fire and the shooting died down.

Workers managed to unload some food from one truck and put it in three ambulances. But as the first ambulance drove into the camp, firing broke out again, and the Iranian was killed.

Relief Effort Postponed

Police said three Amal militiamen and one civilian were wounded in the fighting. A Palestinian official said seven people inside the camp also died in the violence.

A Palestinian spokesman, who declined to be identified, blamed Justice Minister Nabih Berri’s Amal fighters for the shooting.

An Amal spokesman blamed Palestinian gunners for opening fire on the trucks, then shelling the nearby Shia Muslim suburbs.

Police said the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, which sponsored the relief mission, donated two truckloads of food supplies to Shia Muslims living in slums around the camp.

Friday’s attack forced U.N. officials to postpone the relief effort until today, when a convoy, escorted by Syrian and Iranian observers, rolled into Borj el Brajne and unloaded 15 tons of flour and two tons of powdered milk.

‘Shortage of Animals’

Some Palestine Liberation Organization officials and a British doctor in the camp have said residents of Borj el Brajne had resorted to eating dogs, cats and rats.

Twelve-year-old Fadi Shaker, who sneaked out of the camp, told journalists: “Almost every man, woman and child has eaten cats or dogs, donkeys or mules. Now there’s a shortage of animals.”

The only supplies to reach the camp on Friday were eight 110-pound bags of skimmed milk, a bag of bandages and eight bags of yeast, said a Palestinian spokesman.

Shia Muslim leader Berri had earlier promised to order a one-hour truce in the fighting around Borj el Brajne to allow supplies in, provided an equal amount of food was sent to his Shia community. The U.N. agency agreed.

Relief Attempts Have Failed

But attempts to move food into the camp had failed four times in three days because of fighting.

The foiled mission came after daylong clashes in Beirut between the Amal militiamen and Palestinians and an Israeli air raid against Palestinian positions near the southern port of Sidon.

Earlier Clashes

Police said eight people were killed and 19 wounded in Friday’s clashes with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades around Borj el Brajne and the nearby Chatilla camp.

Police said four guerrillas of Yasser Arafat’s PLO were wounded in the 15-minute Israeli air raid on buildings in the Miye ou Miye camp outside Sidon, 25 miles south of Beirut.

Three helicopter gunships opened fire in the early morning hours as Israeli jets dropped flares to illuminate five targets in and around the hillside camp, police reported.

It was Israel’s first night-time air attack in about two years. The Israeli command in Tel Aviv said its pilots reported accurate hits and returned safely to base.

Sixth Attack This Year

Police said the targeted buildings were used by guerrillas of Arafat’s mainstream Fatah faction, which has been making a comeback in Lebanon. Palestinian guerrillas lost their Lebanese power base as a result of Israel’s 1982 invasion.

Friday’s air raid was the sixth this year against targets in Lebanon and the second in less than 24 hours.

Amal announced Friday that its militiamen have returned to positions around the Christian town of Maghdousheh, three miles southeast of Sidon, after their evacuation by the Palestinians.

But reporters in Sidon said the guerrillas still occupied the disputed positions, which are separated from Amal-controlled territory by a strip manned by radical Shias of the pro-Iranian group Hezbollah, or Party of God.

The Syrian-backed Amal has been fighting the Palestinians since May, 1985, in an effort to prevent their comeback.

Hostage Deal Called Off

Meanwhile, kidnapers holding three Americans and an Indian said in a statement released today that a possible deal to trade them for 400 Arab prisoners in Israel was off.

A handwritten statement from the Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine also appeared to indicate that the kidnapers were not considering killing the hostages in the near future.

“You will find us merciful,” the statement said. “We shall not shed the blood of innocents. As for the criminals, their punishment will be civilized.”

The four men--Americans Robert Polhill, Jesse Turner and Alann Steen, and Indian Mithileshwar Singh, who has resident alien status in the United States--were kidnaped Jan. 24 from the campus of Beirut Univeristy College, where they taught.