Syrian Troops Mass Outside Beirut Slums

Thousands of tank-led Syrian troops rolled down from Lebanon’s central mountains Saturday and prepared to enter the slums of south Beirut.

By nightfall, several thousand soldiers and 250 tanks and armored personnel carriers were deployed at the edge of the 16-square-mile slum area, buttressing 7,500 Syrian troops already in West Beirut, military sources said.

The Syrian troop move followed the conquest of the slums by fighters of the pro-Iranian Shia Muslim group Hezbollah (Party of God) in nine days of savage fighting with Amal, the Syrian-backed Shia Muslim militia.

Police said 211 people had been killed and 586 wounded since the rival militias began the most recent round of fighting on May 6. Hezbollah has an estimated 3,000 combatants fighting Amal, which has thrown about 6,500 militia fighters into the warfare.

The decision to “deploy troops in the southern suburbs (came) after Hezbollah refused to heed Syrian warnings and calls for a truce,” sources close to the Syrian leadership said.

“The buildup is expected to be completed sometime . . . (today), perhaps at daybreak or a little later, after which the forces will move in,” one source said on condition of anonymity.

The south Beirut slums are where most of the 18 foreign hostages, including nine Americans, are believed held by kidnapers affiliated with Hezbollah.

Hostages Reported Moved

The Beirut-based magazine Ash-Shiraa reported Friday that the hostages had been moved from an exposed barracks to the home of Hezbollah spokesman Ibrahim Amin to prevent their liberation. There was no independent confirmation of the report.

The vanguard of the incoming Syrian forces rumbled across south Beirut’s Ouzai coastal highway late Saturday afternoon in 48 T-55 Soviet-made tanks with gunners atop their turrets. Truckloads of infantrymen and ammunition and jeeps mounted with 106-millimeter recoilless rifles streamed in afterward.

Hundreds of plainclothes Syrian secret service agents at gateways to the slums blocked reporters and photographers from entering.

Two Syrian generals, flanked by senior aides, met for an hour with Amal’s chieftain Nabih Berri at his heavily fortified house in West Beirut on Saturday night.

“They have agreed that the Syrians will go into the slums but not into the nearby Palestinian refugee camps” where rival factions also have been fighting, a Berri spokesman said later on condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, police said 20 people were killed and 41 were injured Saturday in the house-to-house inter-Shia Muslim fighting and other factional clashes in south Beirut.