Shia Militia Lets U.N. Deliver Food, Medicine to Beirut Camps

U.N. relief trucks, loaded with tons of food and the first medicine allowed through Lebanese Shia Muslim militia lines, rolled into a besieged Palestinian refugee camp Friday.

Officials of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said tons of powdered milk, sugar, oil, rice, cheese, jam, other food and medical supplies were unloaded in the Chatilla camp Friday.

“Today, I ate fresh meat for the first time in five months,” said Walid, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy in Chatilla, which was about 90% destroyed during the 6-month-siege. “I have been eating cat meat before. I hate it.”

Syrian soldiers took up positions at the Chatilla refugee camp Wednesday and let women go outside the shantytown to obtain food, but Muslim gunmen confiscated any medicine the women tried to take back into the camp.

Blockaded Since November

Gunmen of the Shia Muslim Amal militia have blockaded Chatilla and the much larger Borj el Brajne camp nearby since November in an effort to keep Palestine Liberation Organization guerrillas from reclaiming the power base they lost during the Israeli invasion of 1982.

U.N. supply trucks have approached the besieged Chatilla camp previously, but most were fired on by the Shia militiamen and retreated. A few trucks have made it into Borj el Brajne since the siege began, but Friday’s convoy was the first to enter Chatilla since last November. About 3,000 Palestinians live in Chatilla and 20,000 in Borj el Brajne.

Bulldozers were brought in Friday to remove earthworks and sandbagged positions Amal militiamen had built around the refugee camps.

Syrians have escorted Red Cross ambulances that evacuated 68 seriously wounded or ailing Palestinians from the camps since Wednesday. A doctor in Chatilla has said 100 more wounded Palestinians need treatment outside.

Women and children emerged from both shantytowns on shopping excursions Friday, but Amal forces still kept men from returning to their jobs outside.

“My husband feels he is in prison. He’s dying to come out and look for a job,” said Wassila Hammoud, a housewife from Borj el Brajne.