Syrian Troops Liberate Refugee Camp in Beirut

Syrian troops took up positions around the battered Chatilla Palestinian refugee camp Tuesday to enforce a cease-fire between Palestinians and Shia Muslims and allow some refugees to leave for the first time in five months.

Dozens of Chatilla residents applauded as more than 50 Syrian soldiers brandishing assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers walked past Shia Muslim Amal militia siege lines into the small settlement in the southern outskirts of Beirut.

The deployment, the first in the camp since about 7,000 Syrian troops entered West Beirut on Feb. 22 to end rival militia fighting, was the result of a Syrian-brokered accord reached Sunday between six Palestinian groups opposed to guerrilla leader Yasser Arafat and representatives of Amal.

For the first time in months, hundreds of refugees were able to emerge from their damp shelters and walk out of the camp, still ringed by Amal’s Soviet-made tanks, to embrace relatives waiting at the camp’s entrance.

Three children trapped throughout the siege slipped to the edge of the shantytown, where a mother and sister were waiting for one of them, 12-year-old Mahmoud Ghandour.

“There is nothing left inside except scared, sick and hungry, hungry people,” Ghandour said. “I lived in fear because of the shelling. There is nothing inside, no food, no water, nothing. We ate grains, grass and when it became unbearable, people resorted to eating cats.”

Reporters who walked about 75 yards inside the tiny settlement found scenes of devastation and squalor. Rubble and debris blocked lanes muddied by water from broken pipes and littered with mounds of reeking garbage. Refugees stared at the Syrian troops from shell-pocked houses.

Women, men and children, appearing malnourished and pale, recounted their ordeal.

Hussein Mohasen said residents stayed inside damp shelters and could not drink the water that became polluted by insects and fuel after the camp’s water tanks were shelled.

About 700 people have been killed in the five-month “camps war” between Amal and the Palestinians in three camps, Chatilla and Borj al Brajne camp in Beirut and Rashidiyeh in southern Lebanon.