Lebanon Hunts Cleric; 50 Hurt or Killed

The Lebanese army launched a massive manhunt Saturday for fiery cleric Sheik Sobhi Tufeili after clashes with his radical supporters in which at least 50 people were killed or wounded.

Troops sealed off the anti-Westerner’s home village of Britel in eastern Lebanon after routing his forces in battles that erupted in the town of Baalbek on Friday.

But there were no signs early today that they were close to arresting Tufeili, who was expelled a week ago by the Muslim fundamentalist Hezbollah and triggered the fighting by occupying a Baalbek school run by the pro-Iranian group.

Tensions were running high in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley as the army reinforced its positions, urged people to stay home and warned that anyone carrying a weapon would be arrested.

Tanks and armored personnel carriers mounted with machine guns took up positions off the main road to Britel as part of the hunt for Tufeili, who led Hezbollah in the 1980s when it was accused of kidnapping Westerners and carrying out deadly suicide bombings.

An army statement said Tufeili and his followers faced charges of endangering the country, killing military personnel and civilians, and forming an armed group--a serious crime in light of Lebanon’s 1975-90 sectarian civil war.

Journalists were ordered out of Britel as the army prepared for a siege. Britel residents were able to leave, but no one was allowed to enter the village.

The army ordered the closure of all offices in Lebanon run by Tufeili, a veteran political activist who was expelled from Hezbollah in a dispute with the group’s current, more moderate leadership.

State television, which earlier reported that 50 people were killed or wounded in the fighting in Baalbek, 45 miles east of Beirut, quoted the army as saying that two army officers and a soldier were among the dead.

A spokesman for Tufeili said that at least 18 of his supporters, including three women, were killed.

The army said after capturing the school at dawn Saturday that they found four bodies inside, while a civilian woman who was hit in the leg by shrapnel bled to death.

Troops took up positions on hills overlooking Britel, beside the snow-covered mountains at the eastern edge of the Bekaa Valley, where Tufeili was thought to be holed up. The Syrian border lies on the other side of the mountains.

Hezbollah is a powerful Shiite Muslim group that runs charities and has a military arm fighting Israeli troops in southern Lebanon.

Tufeili, 49, led Hezbollah at a time when Western governments said it directed shadowy groups that carried out kidnappings and attacked foreign targets, including a 1983 suicide bombing that killed 241 U.S. servicemen.

Tufeili, who has condemned Hezbollah’s current leadership as too soft and stirs passions with fiery anti-Western speeches, reentered the political arena last year by launching a “hunger revolt” to press the government into easing poverty.