Gunfire Leaves a New Martyr in Martyr’s Square : Toll Rises as Lebanese Fail to End Crisis

Slashing rain muted the stutter of an automatic rifle over Martyrs’ Square. But a man died in the brief burst of fire, one more victim of the relentless warfare in the heart of Beirut.

A young militiaman of the Christian Lebanese Forces grinned cheerfully after shooting the Muslim gunman who had incautiously shown himself in no-man’s land.

A Beirut civilian turned his back dispiritedly on what was once the unsleeping heart of the capital. “This is truly a martyrs’ square,” he muttered.

Scars of 13-Year Conflict

Virtually every building in the city shows the scars of 13 years of intermittent civil conflict. The no-man’s land here divides Christians in the east from a variety of Muslim factions--often warring among themselves--and their Syrian allies in the west. Roads are potholed from bursting shells.

“Every street has its own sad story,” a resident commented.

A solution appears remote as Lebanon’s worst political crisis in 45 years of independence continues, leaving the country without a head of state and with two rival governments, one Christian and one Muslim; a crippled Parliament, and a divided army.

Martyrs’ Square, formerly lined with restaurants, theaters and shops, is now a desolate wasteland disturbed only by the furtive movements of rival militiamen and the occasional crackle of gunfire.

The elegant eight-story buildings around the rectangular square and the big Rivoli cinema at the northern end are burned-out shells.

The martyrs’ monument still stands, however, commemorating the hanging of Christian and Muslim nationalists in the square by the Ottoman Turks in 1915.

Figure Loses an Arm

An arm has been blasted off one of the three figures, and the now-green bronze is scarred by bullets and shrapnel.

Christian gunmen have erected a high earth barricade across the square between the monument and the site of the old floral clock, now vanished under weeds and rubble.

Elsewhere along the line, wrecked buses and cars have been upturned and big metal shipping containers piled high to protect pedestrians from sniper fire through gaps in the buildings.

Christian militiamen sleep on blankets spread over iron bed frames in dark, windowless rooms. The upper stories of buildings are a warren of sandbagged positions with gun slits overlooking Muslim posts, some only yards away.

“Move quickly at this point,” an officer said, urging a visitor past an unprotected gap in the wall.

Off one end of the square, the engines of two armored troop carriers grumbled quietly as a platoon of cadets from the Lebanese Forces officers’ academy practiced street fighting.

Two cadets, one armed with a machine gun and the other with a rocket launcher, crouched at a corner as six comrades raced across the street, each clutching the other in case one was hit.

A ragtag group of gunmen is being turned into a disciplined force with a variety of sophisticated weapons. The same is happening on the other side of the front.

North to South Split

The Green Line dividing the Christian and Muslim sectors winds snake-like through the city from the port in the north to the teeming Shia Muslim southern suburbs.

But only a block from the front line, the adaptability of the Lebanese--”the curse of the Lebanese,” as one resident put it--keeps the city moving at a frenetic pace.

Traffic jams are endemic. Shops filled with foreign goods do booming business. Restaurants keep alive Lebanon’s reputation for excellent food.

What is extraordinary to the visitor is not the extent of destruction, but that so much remains.

Despite the mayhem, Beirut with its sandy coastline and spectacular backdrop of dark green pine-clad hills remains one of the most beautiful of Mediterranean cities.