Shia Tank Gunners Pound Refugee Camp : 25 Killed as Palestinians Repulse Assaults; Truce Is Declared

BEIRUT — Shia Muslim tank gunners poured fire into Beirut’s Chatilla refugee camp Saturday, and its Palestinian guerrilla defenders beat back repeated attempts to overrun the shantytown. The Shia forces later called a unilateral cease-fire.

Police said 25 people were killed and 77 were wounded in the fiercest clash of the three-week battle for control of refugee camps in Beirut and southern Lebanon. In the last three weeks, more than 465 people have been killed and 1,077 wounded in the fighting at the Beirut camps and in southern Lebanon.

The head of the Shia Muslim Amal militia, Nabih Berri, ordered a unilateral cease-fire after guerrillas thwarted assaults by his militiamen. Berri, who also is Lebanon’s justice minister, issued the order from Damascus, Syria, where he has been meeting with Syrian, Libyan and Iranian officials who are trying to mediate a lasting truce.

Support From Damascus

Amal, backed by Syria, is determined to prevent the Palestine Liberation Organization from rebuilding the Lebanon power base it lost in Israel’s June, 1982, invasion.

A senior aide at Berri’s office in Beirut said that the militiamen held their fire at 4:30 p.m. The aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they planned to observe the truce until 10 a.m. today and added that if the Palestinians observed it, the cease-fire could be made “permanent.”

Occasional bursts of gunfire echoed from Chatilla and the nearby Borj el Brajne camp after nearly 24 hours of fighting. At one point Amal gunners were hammering the two camps at a rate of one shell every four seconds.

Police said Palestinian guerrillas entrenched in the mountains southeast of Beirut opened up with artillery on Amal strongholds in the Shia slums around the two camps in an effort to lift the pressure on their comrades in the camps.

Thick, black smoke engulfed Chatilla, and shell explosions resounded across the capital as ambulances evacuated victims of the fighting. The camp once housed 14,000 refugees, but most fled after the conflict broke out Nov.24.

Palestinian communiques claimed that units of the Lebanese army’s predominantly Shia Muslim 1st and 6th brigades fought alongside the Amal forces.

The Palestine National Salvation Front, a loose alliance of six guerrilla factions based in Damascus, appealed to the Soviet Union, Syria, Libya and Iran to intervene to halt what it called “the Chatilla genocide.”

Chatilla defenders firing armor-piercing, rocket-propelled grenades beat back eight Shia attempts to conquer the camp in 12 hours, said a Salvation Front communique.

The Salvation Front is at odds with forces loyal to Yasser Arafat in the PLO, but the two factions joined forces to fight Amal.

Heavy Damage in Camp

PLO statements said 85% of the Chatilla camp has been destroyed. About 9,000 Palestinian refugees had to flee their homes in Shia-controlled districts of Muslim West Beirut, the PLO said.

Meanwhile, police in southern Lebanon said one person was killed and three people were wounded in intermittent exchanges of machinegun fire between PLO guerrillas and Amal fighters.

Fighting around Maghdousheh, which commands the heights around Sidon, the southern port city 25 miles south of Beirut, was less intense than that in Beirut.

Iranian mediators drove to Sidon and Tyre, 25 miles farther south, after consultations in Damascus with Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Hussein Sheikhul Islam.

The delegation brought with it a Salvation Front official, Aby Maher Yamani, to help sell a cease-fire plan based on a guerrilla withdrawal from Maghdousheh in return for allowing relief supplies to enter the Amal-besieged Rashidiyeh camp in Tyre.

Yamani told reporters the delay in a guerrilla withdrawal from Maghdousheh was due to “the escalation around the Beirut refugee camps.”

Police said Amal allowed one truck carrying milk and six ambulances into Rashidiyeh late Saturday. They said the ambulances left three hours later carrying wounded.