Bloody Round 4 in Beirut

A wave of mounting despair swept across Lebanon through most of last week, as the conflict between left-wing Moslem and right-wing Christian factions exploded into yet another round of fighting. The strife that had intermittently rocked the country since April was spreading. The street battles were fiercer than ever, and the government seemed unable to halt them. Reflecting the grim mood was Radio Lebanon Announcer Sharif Akhawi, who said on the air: "Armed men are everywhere. All roads are closed. Blood maniacs are at large. We are losing Lebanon."

At week's end, however, there was at least a faint ray of hope. A new truce --arranged by President Hafez Assad of Syria, Palestine Liberation Organization Leader Yasser Arafat and Lebanese Premier Rashid Karami--seemed to be making some headway. In parts of Beirut, Christians and Moslems tore down barricades and gun emplacements and were aided by army bulldozers. But elsewhere in the capital, the combatants continued exchanging gunfire. The week's senseless violence had taken 100 lives, raising the death toll since April to more than 2,500, and had devastated even more of Beirut, turning the capital's urbanscape into a scarred battlefield (see color).

Shaky Truce. The latest round of fighting in Beirut, fourth in the tragic sequence, rippled into other areas of Lebanon, principally Moslem Tripoli and the neighboring predominantly Christian town of Zgharta. The shooting began after a shaky and frequently violated two-week truce, during which it seemed for a time that the wobbly "rescue" government of Premier Karami might be able to contain the situation. With help from Syria, which does not want uncontrolled civil war on its doorstep, Karami had worked out a ceasefire between the heavily armed Christian and Moslem guerrillas. Karami hastily put together a "National Reconciliation Committee," whose 20 members represented most of Lebanon's religious and political factions.

New battles flared up even as the committee struggled for ways to end the current skirmishing and solve the religious and class differences that underlay the shooting. Bulldozers had hardly cleared away old rubble from previous fighting when debris came crashing down into the streets from new explosions. Random incidents, typical of the insanity that stalks Lebanon today, added to the intensity of the fighting. Two mortar rounds, apparently fired on aim less trajectories from undisclosed positions, hit a street in one of Beirut's Moslem quarters where harried housewives had queued up to buy bread; 24 were killed and 40 wounded. A rocket round elsewhere took the lives of five young children. Christians were appalled when they heard of a Moslem attack on a Christian village in the north of Lebanon; at least 15 people were massacred and 40 houses destroyed.

Early in the week, the weather seemed to cooperate in cooling things off a bit. The first rain of autumn, a torrential downpour, inundated streets, chasing snipers to shelter and for a short time, at least, swallowing the sound of the guns. "God has sent his rain to put out the fire," announced Radio Lebanon's Akhawi during one broadcast. "Pray that it will also wash our hearts." It did not, unfortunately.

The spreading battle set more and more fires, whose smoke soon covered much of eastern Beirut and hung like a giant cloud over ships in the port. Lebanese firemen, assisted by nine fire engines sent from Damascus, were unable to reach the flames because of the shooting. Reported TIME Beirut Bureau Chief Karsten Prager: "The ferocity of the new fighting deepened the numbness that had been there all along, the recognition by most Lebanese of their total impotence in changing the course of events. The rattle and thump of gunfire kept the city in jitters. Rightists and leftist militiamen blasted away at one another in the old downtown area and in the familiar hot points of Ain Rumanneh, Chiyah, Ashrafiyeh and Furn Chebbak, all along the eastern and southern peripheries of the city.

Roving Gangs. "Almost all of the capital, with the exception of its northwest corner, remained unsafe and paralyzed. A 6 p.m.-to-5 a.m. curfew had little effect on street fighters and roving gangs of plastiqueurs, who blew up a few more shops, adding to the 500 or more already destroyed. The right-wing Christian Phalange claimed that more than 400 mortar shells, a respectable amount in any military engagement, fell on one of its strongholds, the Ashrafiyeh quarter, during a single day."

Premier Karami did not commit the country's 18,000-man armed forces to help stop the fighting, primarily because most of its officers are Christian and therefore, Moslems charge, pro-Phalange. Since the shooting first started in April, ineffectual President Sulieman Franjieh, a mountain man from Zgharta, has done little either to mediate the war or to calm his frightened people. In desperation, Karami drove to Damascus to confer with Syria's Assad and P.L.O. Leader Arafat, as 320,000 Palestinians living in Lebanon are a central point of conflict between Moslems, who support them, and Christians, who resent their presence.

Assad, unwilling to become too involved in the Lebanese imbroglio, demanded that Arafat and Karami press the Moslems into a cease-fire while President Franjieh and Interior Minister Camille Chamoun, a former President and prominent Maronite Christian, simultaneously pressure their side. Arafat agreed to postpone a trip to Saudi Arabia in order to help restore calm, and discussions began at week's end on possible joint Moslem-Christian patrols to enforce a ceasefire. The patrols have been tried previously with little success.

Reign Ended. Other Arab nations were frightened by the continuing violence in what was once considered one of the Arab League's least violent nations. Acting on a proposal by Kuwait, the league called foreign ministers of 20 member nations to a meeting this week in Cairo to discuss possible solutions to the Lebanese crisis.

Even if the new truce holds, the latest round of fighting has probably ended Beirut's long reign as the commercial queen of the Arab world. At least 25,000 Lebanese, including many prominent businessmen, have taken refuge in Damascus, while others have fled to Athens or other points in Europe. More than 60% of the 1,000 Japanese assigned to Beirut have left the country. The list of American firms that have ordered their personnel or their dependents to leave Lebanon reads like a roll call of U.S. business overseas: General Electric, General Motors, Boeing, Lockheed, FMC Corp., International Harvester, American Cyanamid, Raytheon, First National City Bank, Chase Manhattan, Morgan Guaranty, Irving Trust. "When the banks move out," observed one evacuated businessman last week, "that means the end of Beirut."

Many of the companies have shifted operations to Athens, 700 air miles and 100 minutes away. Many will probably stay on, partly because of Athens' proximity to the Middle East, partly because of a Greek law granting generous tax-free status to foreign companies that have headquarters in Greece but do no business inside the country. There is apparently more than enough space for the corporate refugees from the fighting in the Lebanese capital. Last week, reported TIME'S Dean Brelis from Athens, the companies were rapidly filling up empty offices in a 24-story business building in downtown Athens. The previous tenant was a logistics branch of the U.S. Navy, which was forced to move out when the Greek government ended Sixth Fleet home-porting facilities in protest against American policy on Cyprus.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.