6 Dead, Many Trapped in Beirut Artillery Exchange

Apartment buildings burned out of control Saturday and cars smoldered in streets carpeted with rubble after nine hours of artillery battles between Syrian and Christian forces.

Police said six people were killed and 52 were wounded overnight.

Shellfire severed the Lebanese capital’s power cables and plunged the city--which usually gets one to two hours of power a day--into darkness. The only lights that illuminated the skies were the flashes of exploding shells.

Ambulances drove on sidewalks, hugging the walls of high-rise buildings for cover. Through loudspeakers they blared: “A civil defense team is in the area. Please notify us if you need any help.”

“Over here! Over here!” a man’s voice echoed in the densely populated Muslim West Beirut neighborhood of Zaidaniyeh. The rescuers rushed in the dark in the direction of the voice to find a family trapped under a demolished house.

In the district of Koreitem, artillery rounds blasted a building while inhabitants were in the underground shelter.

When the shelling eased, Soumaya Medawar emerged from hiding to find her apartment a pile of rubble. Unable to cope with the shock, Medawar, 68, suffered a fatal heart attack.

The casualties raised the toll to 440 killed and 1,836 wounded in the 18-week confrontation between mainly Christian troops under Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun, who heads a Christian government, and the Syrians, who back a rival Muslim government.

“Several casualties remained under the rubble for quite a long time, simply because no one had a telephone line to request help from rescuers,” a police spokesman said.

The divided capital shook as Syrian gunners entrenched in West Beirut fired their Soviet-designed, multi-barreled rocket launchers at the rate of 40 projectiles a minute.

The rockets blasted residential districts in Christian East Beirut, the coastline to the north and hills to the east and northeast.