Markets, Hospital Shelled in Beirut; 22 Die, 70 Hurt

Shells blasted street markets and a hospital in the Lebanese capital Wednesday, killing at least 22 people and wounding 70 in another of the fierce Christian-Muslim artillery duels that have confined residents to bomb shelters for a month.

It was the fifth straight day in which residential neighborhoods have been heavily bombarded.

At least 159 people have been killed and about 500 wounded since the current battle began about a month ago between Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun’s Christian army units and an alliance of Syrian troops and their Lebanese Muslim militia allies.

Nearly all the casualties have been civilians in what has been called the worst fighting since 1985 in Lebanon’s 14-year civil war.

Sheik Sabah al Ahmed al Sabah, Kuwait’s foreign minister and head of an Arab League mediation team, called for a truce after meeting in Syria with Lebanese Muslims.

Acting Lebanese Premier Salim Hoss, who heads the Muslim Cabinet, endorsed the cease-fire.

Aoun, head of the rival Christian Cabinet and leader of the 20,000 Christian army troops, did not react publicly.

The fighting began last month after Aoun’s forces closed seaports run by militias, depriving the government of an estimated $100 million in revenue.

Syrian troops in turn blockaded the 310-square-mile Christian enclave north and east of Beirut, where one million Christians live.

Syria has 32,000 soldiers in Lebanon under a 1976 peacekeeping mandate from the Arab League, and has become the country’s main power broker. Aoun calls the Syrians an occupation army and has vowed to drive them out.

A police spokesman said most of the casualties Wednesday were in Muslim West Beirut, where shells fired by Aoun’s gunners hit three vegetable markets and the Barbir hospital, one of the Muslim sector’s four major medical centers.

The murderous bombardment of Beirut has essentially squeezed people’s daily lives to four hours of scurrying about their business and 20 hours underground.

When the Syrian and Christian gunners rest at daybreak, thousands of residents cautiously emerge from bunkers to hurriedly buy supplies of food, water, candles, gas lamps, decks of cards and sleeping pills.

Just before the antagonists resume the deadly duel, residents rush back to shelters on both sides of the Green Line that divides the city into Muslim and Christian sectors.

Most nightclubs, bars, restaurants, cafes and movie houses are closed. So are schools and universities. Banks operate haphazardly for two or three hours a day, depending on the ferocity of the shelling.

“The only thing that matters nowadays is self-preservation,” said Amin Trad, a pharmacist in Christian East Beirut. “Survival is the name of the game.

“I don’t have statistics. But if this continues, we will soon run out of tranquilizers,” said Trad, whose pharmacy is shielded by tall sandbag walls.

Shukri Lahhoud, a banker who lives in a posh East Beirut district, said he and his neighbors play poker and backgammon in their three-floor underground shelter.

The bouts of savage shelling have blown gaping holes in hundreds of houses, wrecked power plants, destroyed city water pipes and threatened to crush the nation’s infrastructure.

Police statistics show an average of 3,000 shells fell on the city and its environs every day of the past three weeks.