Lawton Constitution · 1 July 1976

CP-1976-026

Pan-Arab Ceasefire Appeal Ignored In Lebanon

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Transcribed from the clipping

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — Christian militiamen today stepped up their bombardment of the last major Moslem holding in southeast Beirut, the Tal Zaatar Palestinian refugee camp. Both sides ignored a Pan-Arab appeal for a ceasefire in the civil war. Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo issued the appeal for a cease-fire at midday.

They also urged an airlift of troops from Arab counties to begin separating the warring Lebanese factions. ABOUT 1,300 Saudi Arabian and Sudanese sowdiers left Damascus today to join the 800 Syrian and Libyan troops sent to Beirut last week as the vanguard of the Pan-Arab peacekeeping force. The Syriafs and Libyans have stayed away from the firing lines.

As the cease-fire deadline passed, heavy rockets roared from Moslem areas headed for Christian positions. Shelling from the Christian side set several fires in the Moslem neighborhood of Tariq el-Gedideh. An awl-night rocket and artillery pounding of the camp set a number of fires in the refugee camp.

YASIR ARAFAT’S Palestinian guerrillas rejected a Christian ultimatum to “surrender or be wiped out.” They vowed to defend the camp “to the last man and last drop of blood.” “The camp is as good as fallen,” said a spokesman for former President Camille Chamoun’s Tigers militia.

“We are at the main gates of the camp and have already changed its name to Tigers Hill.” Tal Zaatar means Thyme Hill. A Palestinian spokesmen said the defending guerrillas were fighting hand-to-hand and had lowered the muzzles of their antiaircraft guns to fire point-blank.

The camp formerly housed 20,000 Palestinians and an estimated 30,000 Lebanese refugees from Israeli raids into southern Lebanon. But most of the civilians are believed to have fled, and the camp was reported defended by 1,000 to 2,000 guerrillas.

THE CHRISTIAN militiamen completed their conquest of the smaller Jisr el-Basha refugee camp nearby, which the Palestinians abandoned Wednesday. The Palestinians accused the Christians of “blasting to death hundreds of women and children in air raid shelters” in the camp.

But Christian spokesmen said most of the civilians in the camp escaped when the attack began 10 days ago, and about 200 guerrillas who were defending the camp at the end escaped to Tal Zaatar. The Palestinians and their leftist Lebanese Moslem allies were retaliating with mortar and artillery attacks from Moslem west Beirut on Jisr el-Basha and Christian residential areas.

But the Christians said a Palestinian-Moslem counterattack on the Christian suburb of Ein Rummaneh had evidently failed. As the Christians concentrated their attack on Tal Zaatar, Syrian troops and tanks were reported to have overrun Palestinian positions in the mountains 30 miles east of Beirut around the town of Ayoun Siman.

“OUR FORCES in Ayoun Siman have taken up new hilltop positions and will fight the Syrian invaders from hill to hill,” said a communique from the joint central command of Palestinians and Lebanese Moslems.

The Christians expressed determination to purge all Palestinian and Moslem pockets between west Beirut, which they control, and the Christian enclave stretching northeast from the city to the mountains and Tripoli. They said the battle was a clearing operation in preparation for the possible partitioning of Lebanon.

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