WORLD : Aoun Attack Escalates Fighting
Renegade Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun’s troops attacked a rival Christian militia’s command post today in the heaviest fighting in a 4-day-old confrontation that has reportedly killed at least 100 people.
President Elias Hrawi urged France and other countries to demand that Aoun halt the fighting. Lebanon’s Maronite Catholic prelate called on both sides to end “this mass suicide.”
Police said at least 450 people have been wounded during the conflict. In Muslim West Beirut, which has not been involved in the Christian fighting, two people were killed and 23 wounded from stray mortar shells and gunfire.
Police said they could not say how many people had been killed today because of the intensity of the clashes in East Beirut’s Ashrafiyeh and Karantina districts.
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