Christians Allow Evacuation

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BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - Under a shaky truce, the International Red Cross evacuated 91 badly wounded persons Tuesday from the besieged Palestinian refugee camp at Tal Zaatar. In Geneva, the International Red Cross Committee said 150 more wounded will be evacuated from the camp Wednesday.

An announcement by the Swiss-based humanitarian organization said the situation of the camp was “dramatic.” “Some among them require surgery, which was impossible inside the camp, and have been waiting for weeks for medical treatment of their wounds,” the committee said.

A convoy of two ambulances and nine trucks entered the battered camp on Beirut’s outskirts, loaded the wounded and carried them back through the Christian sector and across the no man’s land that divides Beirut to a hospital in the Moslemcontrolled part of the city.

While the convoy wound through the narrow streets of the Christian district, scores of people gathered in the streets and on balconies, mostly in silence, to watch it pass. As it crossed into the Moslem sector, Palestinian guerrillas and other Moslem soldiers cut loose with a frenzied barrage of gunfire in the air, celebrating the rescue of the wounded.

A Swedish photographer said that among those rescued was Eva Stahl, a 27-year-old Swedish nurse who lost an arm, suffered a broken leg and miscarriage during the siege. She was the wife of a guerrilla leader killed early in the battle.

The evacuees were the first of some 4,000 wounded the Red Cross hopes to take from the camp, which has been under siege by Christian rightist forces for six weeks. Tuesday’s operation took nearly seven hours from start to finish, with the Red Cross convoy spending about 3½ hours actually inside Tal Zaatar.

During the period, there were sporadic exchanges of gunfire around edges of the camp. But the Christian militia that had prevented five previous evacuation efforts generally abided by the truce negotiated by the Red Cross and the Arab League, and signed by the leaders of all Christian factions.

Christian officers refused, however, to let the Red Cross take one truckload of medical supplies and water into the camp. A tense moment came just after the convoy, with Red Cross chief delegate Jean Hoefliger in the lead car, left Tal Zaatar and was waiting to pass a checkpoint manned by troops of several Christian factions.

A few of the soldiers got into a heated argument apparently about who was going to check the trucks to verify that they contained only wounded. Two of them suddenly began firing their automatic rifles wildly, sending newsmen and other observers diving for cover.

The convoy was delayed for about an hour near the checkpoint and a Red Cross source later said it was because the Christians, in checking the wounded, found five who could walk and forced them to get off the trucks. But after a long discussion, they allowed the five to board the trucks again and leave with the convoy.

Palestinian spokesmen charged that the convoy had come under Christian sniper fire as it reached a former soccer field inside the camp that had been chosen as the place where the wounded would be loaded. The Christians denied the claim, but there was no way to be certain who was right, because of frequent sporadic firing during the entire operation.

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"Christians Allow Evacuation," Victoria Advocate, 4 August 1976. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1976-027. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1976-027