Police say factional struggle bloodiest

in three years; neighborhoods blazing

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP)—Shiites fought an alliance of Druse and communist gunmen for the third day Tuesday in a battle for control of Moslem west Beirut that has caused scores of casualties and set whole neighborhoods ablaze.

Police said at least 24 people were killed and 125 wounded Tuesday in west Beirut’s fiercest factional struggle in three years. They said the toll was at least 30 dead and 150 wounded since the fighting began Sunday.

Dozens of fires raged in residential districts because the intensity of battle kept fire engines from getting through. Several apartment buildings were burned and scores of cars destroyed by gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades.

Grenade explosions and bursts of fire from heavy machine guns shook the city all day. Thousands of families took refuge in basements and bomb shelters.

Syria backs all the factions invovled. In theory they are allied in the 12-year-old civil war with Lebanon’s Christians, but they periodically fight each other for domination of the capital’s Moslem sector.

The pro-Moscow communists have crossed swords with the main Shiite militia Amal since the 1982 Israeli invasion, when the Shiites began moving in on the communist power base in south Lebanon.

Last year, the communists joined Walid Jumblatt’s Druse militia, the pro-Syrian Baath Party and Lebanon’s leftist Syrian Social Nationalist Party in a new coalition called the National Democratic Front.

Syria called cease-fire at daybreak and sundown Tuesday, but the first had no effect and the firing continued long after the second. New internal strife among its clients was a major setback for Syria, which is the main power broker in Lebanon and has been trying to arrange a settlement of the civil war.

Brig. Gen. Ghazi Kenaan, Syria’s military intelligence chief in Lebanon, made a hasty trip to Beirut. The Syrians have 25,000 troops in east and north Lebanon.

The Druse-run Voice of the Mountain radio said unidentified men invaded the house of Communist Party ideologue and writer Hussein Mroweh, 57, in the Shiite-controlled Ramlet al-Baida district and shot him dead with silencer-equipped pistols.

Fighting in the streets halted efforts to locate Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite, who has been missing since leaving his hotel Jan. 20 to negotiate with Shiite kidnappers for the freedom of two American hostages.

American Moslems Mohammed Mehdi and Dale Shaheen, also here to pursue negotiations for the hostages, were trapped in their hotel. Twenty-six foreigners are missing in Lebanon, eight of them Americans.