Syrian Shells Kill 2, Hours After Lebanon Truce Call

BEIRUT —  Syrian gunners lobbed shells at two Christian harbors Thursday, killing at least two people hours after Arab League envoys called a new cease-fire in another attempt to halt two months of fierce artillery battles.

Police said at least three rockets hit two adjacent apartments a mile southeast of the port of Juniyah, killing two people, including a 10-year-old girl. A police spokesman said that eight people were wounded, all relatives of Maronite Catholic Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir.

Also Thursday, rockets fired from multi-barreled launchers in Syrian-policed West Beirut fell in Juniyah itself and on Byblos, another port in the Christian enclave north of the capital. No casualties there were reported.

Toll Now 359 Killed

The new casualties raised the toll to 359 people killed and 1,393 wounded in the two-month battle, the latest round of fighting in Lebanon’s 14-year-old civil war. Nearly all the casualties have been civilians.

Earlier, Lakhdar Ibrahimi, the Arab League assistant secretary general, told reporters that the warring Christian and Muslim factions had agreed on a truce effective at 2:30 p.m. Thursday.

The league’s four previous calls for a shelling halt had little effect on the battle between Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun’s Christian army units and a Muslim alliance of Syrian troops and Druze militiamen.

Ibrahimi, an Algerian, and Abdelaziz Jassem, a Kuwaiti diplomat, have been trying to revive an April 28 cease-fire that did last a few days.

After meeting with acting Premier Salim Hoss, Ibrahimi said the first objective is “normalizing the situation in Lebanon” so the Arab League committee can try to end the civil war.

Hoss has led a Muslim Cabinet and Aoun a competing Christian government since a political crisis in September.

In another development, a statement purportedly signed by an Iranian-backed extremist group believed to hold two American hostages warned against the deployment of Arab observers to monitor the latest attempt at a cease-fire.

The typewritten Arabic-language statement, signed by the Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War), was delivered to a Western news agency in Muslim West Beirut. There was no authenticating picture of Americans Terry A. Anderson or Thomas Sutherland, who are held by the group.

Islamic Jihad repeatedly has said that statements attributed to it are not genuine unless accompanied by a hostage picture or videotape.

Anderson, 41, the chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, was abducted March 16, 1985. He is the longest held of the 16 foreigners missing in Lebanon.