Word: militiamen
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...round of fighting started in early September, when the Israeli army abruptly withdrew its forces to the southern banks of the Awali River, some 17 miles south of Beirut. As the Israelis pulled out of the Chouf Mountains, their positions were quickly occupied and fought over by the Druze militiamen and their enemies, the Christian Phalange militiamen. Reinforced with arms and ammunition from Syria, the Druze promptly trounced the Phalangists and appeared to threaten the Lebanese Army's hold on its own capital. The Druze have enjoyed the support of as many as 2,000 Palestinian guerrillas, some from...
Beginning at dawn on several days last week, Druze and Christian militiamen exchanged artillery fire in villages on both sides of the Beirut-Damascus highway. Ambulances, their sirens wailing, raced up and down the main road as shells whizzed overhead. Small-arms fire echoed in the hills a few hundred yards from the Lebanese Defense Ministry. Much of the time, Christian East Beirut was largely shut down, the streets empty, most shops closed. Shells and rockets fell on the predominantly Muslim southern suburbs as well as on the Christian areas along the coast to the north...
...shops looted. It is deserted except for its Druze occupiers, who sit idly in the shade, cradling their weapons. Across a narrow ravine, within easy sniping distance, is the besieged Christian town of Deir al Qamar, scene of a notorious massacre of Christians by Druze in 1860. The Christian militiamen claim there are now 40,000 refugees crammed into the village. In other times, Deir al Qamar would strike a visitor as a wondrous place, with its fountain in a central square and its houses clinging to a steep mountainside. But today it is, as Mayor George Dib Nehme puts...
Thus last week the symbol of this ancient and hopelessly intricate struggle became the hill town of Suq al Gharb. Here the Druze, having already virtually driven the Christian militiamen out of the mountains, hoped also to hold off the army of the Christian-led government. Here the Syrians hoped to weaken the Gemayel government, and here the Palestinians hoped to win a victory and perhaps a chance to return to West Beirut. The government and its army knew that they must make a stand. At midweek Gemayel, who has been slow in his efforts to broaden his political base...
...served with the U.S. Marine Corps in Viet Nam during the mid-'60s. He returned ten years later to cover the fall of Saigon for the Chicago Tribune. As a journalist, he also rode camels with Eritrean rebels in Ethiopia and was shot in both feet by Muslim militiamen in Beirut...