12 Die in Lebanese Camp Fighting; Priest Murdered

Shell blasts and staccato bursts of gunfire shook the capital today as police reported 12 people died and 35 were wounded in factional fighting in Palestinian refugee camps and neighboring Shia Muslim slums.

Meanwhile, the synod of Maronite Catholic bishops met in an emergency session to investigate the kidnaping, torture and killing of Msgr. Albert Khreish, 53, head of the Maronite Spiritual Affairs Court.

The meeting was chaired by the Nasrallah Sfeir, patriarch of the 850,000 Maronites who make up Lebanon’s largest Christian community.

Khreish’s bullet-riddled, pajama-clad body was found Sunday by a bird hunter in a pine tree forest near the Christian resort town of Ghazir.

Gunmen kidnaped the priest from his home in Juniyah, a Christian port north of Beirut, on April 26.

Police said that there were scars indicating physical torture on Khreish’s face and that he had been shot at least 30 times.

Christian sources said the victim’s sister is the wife of the brother of a Palestinian leader who heads the Moscow-oriented Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The Lebanese Forces militia is a bitter enemy of the Palestinians, who have fought alongside other Muslims in Lebanon’s 13-year-old civil war.

Police said gunfire and shell blasts in Chatilla and Borj el Brajne refugee camps continued today between PLO chairman Yasser Arafat’s Fatah guerrillas and Syrian-backed dissidents.

It was the first major clash between the two sides since Arafat’s reconciliation meeting with Syrian President Hafez Assad in Damascus last week.

At least two people were killed and 15 wounded in the two camps in southern Beirut.

Ten people were killed and 20 wounded in fighting Sunday and early today between two Shia Muslim groups in the slums of Raml el Aali and Roweisse, police said.