Shias Closing In on Palestinian Camp

BEIRUT —  Shia Muslim forces closed in on the Palestinian refugee camp of Chatilla behind a barrage of tank fire on Saturday. Guerrillas burst from burning shacks and hurled grenades in last-ditch attempts to stem the onslaught.

Fighting between PLO guerrillas and militiamen of the dominant Shia Amal movement also raged around the sprawling Borj el Brajne camp, south of Chatilla. Police said 27 people were killed and 51 wounded in fighting Saturday around both camps in Beirut. Chatilla shelters about 14,000 Palestinians. Borj el Brajne’s population is estimated at 50,000, including thousands of Lebanese Muslims.

Casualties since Friday stood at 37 dead, 148 injured.

Black smoke billowed from the Chatilla camp as Amal militiamen blocked all roads to the camp.

Journalists watched from a distance as the fighting raged despite efforts by Syria, Libya and Iran to halt Amal’s 18-month-old war against the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Amal has said that PLO attempts to expand beyond Borj el Brajne and Chatilla prompted the crackdown. The militia, led by Justice Minister Nabih Berri, has been trying since March, 1985, to keep the PLO from rebuilding the Lebanese base it lost in the Israeli 1982 invasion.

Dozens of Soviet-made T-54 and American-built M-48 tanks ringed Chatilla, their guns blasting round after round into the camp.

PLO communiques said army units from the predominantly Shia 1st Brigade, which is based in Syrian-controlled eastern Lebanon, rolled down the central mountains to reinforce the 6th Brigade, which has been fighting alongside Amal.

Amal has about 50 Syrian-supplied T-54 tanks. The Lebanese army has the American M-48 tanks.

Hit-and-Run Assaults

Squads of Palestinian guerrillas broke from burning shanties to make hit-and-run grenade assaults against the tank positions.

“A real massacre is being committed today against our Arab Palestinian people in Chatilla similar to the 1982 massacre committed by the Zionists and Fascists,” said a statement by the Palestine National Salvation Front.

It referred to the killing in Chatilla of hundreds of Palestinians by right-wing Christian militiamen, who were allies of Israel during the 1982 invasion.

“It is a genocide,” said the statement by the front, a coalition of six pro-Syrian factions opposed to PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.

In a communique issued by the PLO’s office in Rome, Arafat appealed to “public opinion” to press for protection of the refugee camps by U.N. peacekeeping forces stationed in southern Lebanon.

Arafat’s loyalists and opponents have buried their differences for now and joined forces to defend the camps in Beirut and south Lebanon.

A PLO communique said Syrian artillery fired on the Beirut camps from positions in the central mountain range east of the capital.

But there was no independent confirmation that Syria, which maintains 25,000 troops in eastern and northern Lebanon, had directly joined the battle against the Palestinians.

The Shias appeared determined to overrun Chatilla to balance the PLO’s conquest of the strategic hilltop town of Maghdousheh that commands southern Lebanon’s main coastal highway. Fighting around the town, three miles southeast of the southern port of Sidon, persisted Saturday.

A PLO communique said Shiite gunners shelled the refugee camps of Ein el Hilwa and Miye ou Miye near Sidon, 25 miles south of Beirut.