French Envoy Freed, Credits Shia Muslims

BEIRUT —  A French diplomat abducted last week surfaced unharmed Tuesday and said he owes his freedom to Shia Muslim militiamen who captured his Lebanese kidnapers and then released him after realizing that he was not an Israeli.

In other developments, a roadside bomb explosion killed one Israeli soldier and wounded two others in southern Lebanon, and the Lebanese military command prepared to send new equipment and troops to reinforce army garrisons in the southern port of Sidon, where five days of Muslim-Christian fighting has claimed at least 40 lives.

Gilles Peyrolles, director of the French Cultural Institute in Tripoli, told reporters that members of Amal, the Shia militia, surrounded him and two kidnapers at a remote Lebanese village where their presence aroused the suspicion of a resident who asked for their identity papers.

Hiding Behind a Wall

“I was very frightened. Two of my kidnapers and I were hiding behind a wall,” said Peyrolles, who was seized on March 23 outside his office in Tripoli by a group called the “Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions.”

The exact makeup of the group is unknown, but it is believed to consist of about a dozen people from a single Christian village in northern Lebanon.

When his kidnapers showed reluctance to cooperate with the local man, he “came back with villagers, all armed with Kalashnikovs (assault rifles),” Peyrolles said.

“They surrounded us. They looked menacing and pointed at me saying, ‘Israeli, Israeli,’ ” said the 32-year-old diplomat. All three men were then taken to an Amal office and questioned.

The diplomat, one of six French nationals seized in a wave of abductions this year, said he was separated from his kidnapers during the questioning and then released late Monday night.

Against U.S., Israelis

He said his captors “explained that they are against the Israelis and against the Americans . . . and that they wanted the liberation of their friend who is in prison in France.”

A statement by the group March 25 demanded the release of a comrade, Abdul-Kader Saadi, in exchange for Peyrolles.

Peyrolles said his abductors treated him “very well,” adding: “They were not amateurs. They kept a tight watch on me, a 24-hour surveillance.”

Peyrolles was the seventh Westerner to be released after a recent series of abductions by various groups. Eight remain missing, including five Americans.

The roadside bombing that killed an Israeli soldier occurred as an Israeli patrol passed by in Doueir, near Nabatiyeh, where another Israeli soldier was wounded fatally Saturday. The two deaths raised the number of Israeli troops killed in Lebanon to 645 since the invasion 34 months ago.

Preparing Men, Equipment

In Beirut, the Lebanese military was preparing men and equipment to reinforce the army’s 12th Brigade in southern Lebanon. Two armored battalions, totaling about 1,200 men, were designated to move. Thirty new armored personnel carriers were being outfitted with machine guns and would be ready to move to Sidon within 48 hours, military sources said.

Muslim militiamen and Palestinian guerrillas in Sidon’s two refugee camps--Ein el Hilwa and Miye ou Miye--fired mortars and rockets at Christian militiamen of the Lebanese Forces on the eastern hills Tuesday, reporters said.