Syrian Forces Launch Ground Attack in Beirut

Syrian-led ground forces assaulted a strategic, Christian-held ridgeline above Beirut on Sunday, escalating the bloody conflict that staggered the Lebanese capital with a fourth straight day of relentless shelling.

The attack on the mountaintop town of Souq el Gharb began at 10 a.m. and was led by a Syrian army infantry brigade, supported by Druze and pro-Syrian Palestinian troops, according to reports from Beirut. It was the first major ground assault of the five-month battle for Beirut.

Lebanese Christian fighters claimed late Sunday to have beaten back the offensive, although police confirmed only that heavy fighting was taking place on the ridgeline overlooking the smoke-shrouded capital. Both sides had earlier claimed victory.

A spokesman for the Christian-dominated Lebanese army said the U.S.-trained 8th Brigade “repulsed the assault, counterattacked and put the enemy force into chaotic flight.” However, an official of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt’s Progressive Socialist Party militia claimed that the largely abandoned town, once home to 15,000, and surrounding hamlets had been overrun. He said the assault was led by tanks.

Died on Barricades

Another Christian officer said the attack force numbered only “scores” of soldiers, and that the Syrian tanks were poised in reserve for a breakthrough that was not achieved, according to press reports from Beirut. He said the attackers died on barbed-wire barricades around the army positions.

The Associated Press reported that at least 19 people were killed and 80 wounded Sunday in the capital. A Christian army communique claimed 150 Syrians were killed in the fighting, but a senior army source told the news service that 10 Syrians, 20 Druze and 20 Palestinians were confirmed killed in Souq el Gharb and that another 12 Syrians were killed in fighting along Beirut’s Green Line, which divides the city’s Christian and Muslim sectors.

Souq el Gharb sits atop a mountain ridge just six miles southeast of the heart of Beirut and three miles from Baabda, where Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun, the Lebanese army commander and Christian leader, directs his forces from a bunker beneath the presidential palace.

Control of the ridgeline would give Syrian and Druze gunners a clear line of fire at Baabda and nearby Yarze, where the Defense Ministry and a number of foreign embassies are located, including that of the United States. It would also open the back door for a ground assault on Christian-held East Beirut, if Syrian President Hafez Assad decides to take that fateful step in his test of will with Aoun. The front door lies on the Green Line, and over the past 48 hours there have been reports of Syrian armor moving in the western, Muslim side of the city.

Beirut, meanwhile, was on its knees Sunday. There has been no tap water or electricity for weeks. Bakeries and drugstores were closed. Newspapers failed to publish.

At hospitals in both sectors of the capital, the wounded were sometimes turned away. No room was available, and no plasma. Mobile Red Cross teams were taking blood donations in the shelters. “The smell of death is everywhere,” an East Beirut woman told a reporter from Reuters news agency.

Leaders Stand Firm

Voice of Lebanon, the main Christian radio, began its Sunday morning broadcast with the words, “A new black day starts in Lebanon . . . but, despite everything, good morning.”

With civilian fatalities vaulting toward the 600 mark for five months, spurred by the four days of crushing artillery battles, both Aoun and Syria’s Assad refused to budge despite agonized calls for a truce. “One of us has to . . . be finished,” Aoun told a Beirut-based reporter for the Washington Post on Saturday.

The Christian radio appealed to Arab countries to pressure Assad. “Where are our Arab brethren?” an announcer demanded emotionally. “Beirut is being wiped off the face of the Earth. . . . Our wounded are bleeding to death in the streets and the basements.”

In Damascus, the Syrian capital, French diplomat Francois Scheer arrived from Paris and went directly into talks with Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh. Neither side would discuss the contents of the talks. President Francois Mitterrand, renewing a French initiative to halt the shelling, lift port blockades and resume negotiations, dispatched Scheer, a high Foreign Ministry official, to press the demands made in a French note delivered Friday in Damascus calling “with all urgency” for an end to the bombardments.

On both sides of the Green Line, the shelling has driven five out of six Beirutis from the capital and left the rest shaking with fear and anger in basement shelters.

Calls for Relief

The Syrian response has been obstinacy. “The conspiracy implemented by Aoun is clear,” declared the government newspaper Tishreen on Saturday. “The Arab responsibility requires intensifying efforts to prevent its escalation because it does not threaten only Lebanon’s security but that of the world.” Al Baath, the ruling party newspaper, called for the overthrow of Aoun, who heads a Christian Cabinet in East Beirut, while Salim Hoss heads a rival Muslim Cabinet in the west. The Lebanese government has been divided on sectarian lines since last September, when Parliament was unable to choose a successor to outgoing President Amin Gemayel.

Since the four days of shelling began Thursday, breaking a lull that coincided with the drama of the hostage crisis, the United Nations, Washington, Moscow and other capitals have issued calls for relief.

On Sunday, Egypt, resuming its voice as an Arab leader, demanded the withdrawal of all foreign forces in Lebanon--Syrian, Iranian and Israeli. Said Foreign Minister Esmat Abdel Meguid: “Egypt calls on all factions to rise to their national and historic responsibilities and to seriously resist” any threats to Lebanese sovereignty. An Arab League effort to arrange a cease-fire and political talks collapsed two weeks ago. The league negotiators blamed Syria. Syrian spokesmen blamed Aoun.

The Lebanese general has declared the fighting a “war of liberation” against Syrian troops who control two-thirds of Lebanese territory. “No one moves without the Syrians’ permission,” said a Nicosia-based Western diplomat. “They have checkpoints between every town and village. Their secret police know precisely what’s going on in West Beirut, and probably in parts of the eastern side.”

Aoun adds that he wants all foreign forces out of the country, including the Israelis, who hold a six- to 10-mile-deep security strip north of their border and, when they choose, command Lebanese skies with impunity. The Israelis have armed and supported Christian militias and leaders, with few exceptions, since the Christian-Muslim civil war began 15 years ago.

Syria, whose troops first entered Lebanon as peacekeepers, the year after war broke out, remains deeply committed there, both politically and militarily. A Christian-ruled Lebanon, Damascus officials have pointed out, could tilt toward the Israelis in a Middle East war and present Syria with unacceptable security problems.