Toll Reaches 129 as Beirut Fighting Enters 4th Day

Shia Muslim militias battled for control of high-rise buildings in the south Beirut slums today, and gunfights were reported inside a hospital. Police said 40 people were killed and 105 injured.

The fighting was in its fourth straight day, with both sides using tanks, mortars and rockets.

Today’s casualties brought the overall toll to 129 dead and 322 wounded since the fighting began Friday between the Syrian-armed Amal militia and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, or Party of God.

Most of the 18 foreign hostages in Lebanon are believed held in the labyrinthine slums.

The fighting flared after two weekend cease-fires collapsed in the battle for control of slums that stretch for 16 square miles along Beirut’s southern edge. The clashes began when four Shia Amal men were killed in a street ambush and Amal blamed Hezbollah.

Gun battles flared in the al-Sahel hospital, where a doctor said militiamen forced surgeons to operate at gunpoint on dead comrades “to bring them to life.”

One doctor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said rival gunmen had shot it out inside the hospital.

“We’ve been forced many times to abandon casualties because of gunfights in the emergency ward,” she said.

Doctors confirmed allegations by both sides that wounded fighters have been dragged from ambulances and hospitals by their rivals and slaughtered.