Word: gharb
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...clamped a blockade on Muslim ports and declared a "war of liberation" against Syria. Last week came intimations of a more serious escalation in hostilities. Syrian-backed Muslim forces attempted to invade the Christian sector. Aoun's troops successfully repulsed the ground attack on the town of Suq al Gharb, the gateway to the Christian stronghold in the southeast of the capital. The battle of Beirut appeared to be entering a crucial phase...
Damascus denied that any Syrian troops, who entered Lebanon as peacekeepers in 1976 and neglected to leave, had taken part in the assault. Yet plainly Syria was deeply involved. A Muslim officer who fought under Aoun stated that both Druze and Syrian forces advanced on Suq al Gharb, then turned back under heavy Christian fire, leaving 35 dead Syrians behind. In Damascus, Syrian President Hafez Assad convened representatives of various Muslim, Druze and Palestinian militias to map out a combat plan to topple Aoun. The war council aroused international concern that Syria, which has upwards of 30,000 troops inside...
...control of West Beirut to the Shi'ite and Druze militias in a vicious battle the week before, and the rout south of the city left his government controlling little more than Christian East Beirut. The Muslims were expected to make their next major thrust at Suq al Gharb in the mountains east of Beirut, where the Lebanese Army held a strategic position overlooking the presidential palace at Baabda, just outside the capital. Fighting did break out around Suq al Gharb and along the "green line" separating West and East Beirut, but at week...
...spent the afternoon in the besieged mountain town of Suq al Gharb. His head bare, his sleeves rolled up and his flak jacket worn with an almost sporty air, the young President was the fighting image of his embattled country. He told his troops that for the first time "Mohammed and Antoine were behind the same barricade." The Muslim and Christian names that President Amin Gemayel so deftly joined are symbols of what makes Lebanon unique in the Arab world, while the word barricade was a reference to what has often divided this most contentious of nations. After his return...
...foreign forces. The battle in the mountains has had two aspects. In one sense it has been a sideshow to prevent Lebanon from asking for complete [foreign] withdrawal. In another, I think they wanted to come into Beirut and overthrow the government. Without the army at Suq al Gharb they would have done it. Our army is really only five months old. No one expected them to do so well. I want to tell them, 'You are the most beautiful example for the nation...