After 5 Tries, Beiruti Escapes Devastated Neighborhood : Lebanon: He decribes ordeal in district that is finally captured by Gen. Aoun’s forces.

Five times this month, he had tried to escape from Ein Rummaneh, the East Beirut neighborhood that has been shelled day and night for most of February. On the fifth attempt, he finally made it.

The man, in his late 20s and identified only as Elie, showed the strain of the experience.

He was sallow and short-tempered--”hardly recognizable,” friends said--and his account of the ordeal was repetitious and jumbled.

He said he had huddled for days in a dark but relatively safe room, together with 35 neighbors, as rival Christian forces fought for control of Ein Rummaneh, an area of about six square miles that once was home to 100,000 people.

Today, witnesses say, Ein Rummaneh looks like a cemetery that has been hit by an earthquake.

Since the end of January, the forces of Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun had been trying to make the Lebanese Forces militia, commanded by Samir Geagea, put down their arms. And after more than two weeks of bitter fighting, described as the fiercest and bloodiest of the civil war that began 15 years ago, the issue was decided late Friday when Aoun routed Geagea’s forces.

“There is only one way for Aoun to enter Ein Rummaneh,” Geagea had been quoted as saying earlier Friday, “and that is by killing all the people there.”

Elie told a reporter that on Feb. 1 he went to work as usual, but left at noon after learning that the rival forces were fighting in Ein Rummaneh.

“I drove home through artillery and mortar fire,” he said, adding that it was nothing compared to what was to come.

Literally thousands of shells and rockets have crashed into the area as gunners have sought to dislodge fighters who have taken over one building after another. Hospitals have been hit, along with the offices of the Red Cross. Firemen have been unable to get to buildings set ablaze.

Bodies lie where they fell. More than 500 people have been killed and 2,000 or more wounded.

“We ate cheese and yogurt,” Elie said. “We cooked simple meals on a camp stove.”

He wondered aloud about the fate of his parents and two brothers, who stayed behind because trying to get out was too risky.

“The first time I tried to escape,” he said, “the LF (Lebanese Forces) stopped me. They said no young men would be allowed to leave the area. When I told them I wanted to get food for my family, they said, ‘Send the women.’ ”

On his second try, he said, the Lebanese Forces allowed him to pass, but he was turned back at an army checkpoint. On the next two tries, he was forced back by heavy shelling.

Then, on Wednesday, he set out for a fifth time, taking nothing with him but money.

He said the Lebanese Forces allowed him to pass, but only after a thorough body search to make sure he was not an army man trying to infiltrate the neighborhood in civilian clothing.

“They pulled up his pants legs and checked for red marks on his legs that come from wearing tight army boots,” said a friend who had already heard Elie’s story. “Then they checked for red marks on his shoulders, where the rifle is carried.

“Then they sniffed his breath. Do you know why? Because the smell of gunpowder clings to the face and mouth--a sure sign of a soldier or fighter.”

In the end, Elie was passed through, and he proceeded quickly to the so-called Green Line that separates Christian East Beirut from Muslim West Beirut.

Now he is with friends, safe but nearing a mental breakdown. He stares fixedly toward the east.

Friends try to assure him that his family is probably safe, too, and he responds, “Inshallah, inshallah”-- “If God wills, if God wills.”