Closing the Ring

After 18 months of bloodshed, Lebanon's civil war once again seems to be nearing its bloody end. Under a rain of artillery shells and rockets, 20,000 Syrian troops led by heavy armored units are bludgeoning the main force of Moslem leftists and their Palestinian allies into submission. .

In some of the heaviest righting of the war, the Syrian troops that originally arrived on a "peacekeeping" mission punched their way down the mountainous Damascus-Beirut highway last week to the outskirts of the Lebanese capital. Twenty-five miles to the south, Syrian armor drove to within range of Sidon, the only significant port and supply depot still in Palestinian-leftist hands. The two-part attack, if it succeeds, will reduce Palestinian-held territory to three enclaves cut off from ammunition and fuel. If that happens, reports TIME Cairo Bureau Chief Wilton Wynn, "the war in effect will be over, though real peace will be a long time coming."

Seesaw Battle. At dawn Tuesday, the main Syrian drive, backed by Christian rightist troops, rolled from Sofar toward the last two Palestinian-leftist strongholds east of Beirut, the once fashionable resort towns of Bhamdoun and Aley. Slipping around Bhamdoun under cover of darkness, 4,000 Syrian troops attacked from the west. They waged a seesaw battle through the streets of the town, leaving heavy casualties on both sides, and the stubborn Palestinian resistance slowly crumbled. By week's end, with Syrian tanks established in the main square and parts of the town ablaze, only a few pockets of Palestinians were still holding out.

In nearby Aley, military headquarters of Leftist Leader Kamal Jumblatt, the Syrian onslaught seemed equally overwhelming. Lebanese rightist troops had attacked the town just ten days ago but the Palestinians had beaten them back. They had also mined the main road and lined it with sandbag barricades. The Syrians opened with barrages of rockets, sent in swarms of low-flying MIG fighters, then followed with tanks. Said one fedayeen who fled from a burning house: "They use their rockets like we use our guns. We fire 30 bullets and they fire 30 rockets." Palestinian radio broadcasts appealed to Arab nations to "halt the liquidation of the Palestinian revolution," but the Syrian offensive ground on.

It was hardly coincidental that the Syrian attack took place on the eve of an Arab summit conference scheduled for this week in Cairo. Syria's President Hafez Assad, who wants to impose a settlement that will suppress Palestinian guerrilla activity and assure Syrian influence throughout the region, refused to attend any such meeting. Then, under pressure from Saudi Arabia, Assad agreed to confer with Arab leaders gathered over the weekend at the Saudi capital of Riyadh. After the talking was over, the prospect was that Syria would continue to push its offensive to the end.

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