The World: Battle Notes: Land of the $25 Kill

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In grim contrast to the calm in Lebanon's emerging Christian country-within-a-country, the fighting continued to rage elsewhere in a war that combines tragedy with its own brand of occasional bitter comedy. Some items from the notebooks of TIME Correspondents:

At 39, Bahjat Jaber was a bachelor millionaire and landowner with an overwhelming passion: he really wanted to be a police reporter. As a result, when the war broke out Jaber, a Greek Catholic, eagerly took on the assignment of totting up its casualties day by day. He checked hospital reports and the various warring forces, whose figures, while self-serving, were at least a basis on which to work. An important source was Hisham Shaar, chief of Lebanon's national police, whose network relayed not only the locations of new battles but also their ferocity.

The police force has collapsed as fighting has intensified, and communications are increasingly difficult. But Jaber doggedly continues his daily body count, which has become the only faintly authoritative estimate of the mounting toll of an unceasing war. Jaber figures that 32,000 have been killed so far; for tiny Lebanon, that is the equivalent of 2.2 million dead in an American civil war. He is worried, however, that his figure may be on the low side. As many as 6,000 more people may be missing, their bodies never found, much less counted.

Few of Lebanon's battle casualties are fighting men. Most are unsuspecting civilians suddenly hit by shell or sniper fire—or executed merely for being of the wrong religion in the wrong zone.

Throat cutting has become the ritual form of execution, and each side has settled on a favorite dumping ground for victims. In the Moslem zone of Beirut, for instance, one busy repository is a murky space beneath a highway overpass. Its counterpart on the Christian side is a bridge 150 ft. above the Dog River on the road from Beirut to the renowned Casino du Liban. Bodies are simply tossed from the rail of the bridge, which has become a family sightseeing attraction. Cars double-park while occupants ogle the bodies far below without being bothered by the stench.

Some shooting scripts:

A machine-gun crew in a hot firefight near the home of Samir Tabet, provost of the American University of Beirut, selected the roof of Tabet's car as a new gun position. Before opening fire, however, they carefully spread newspapers on the roof so the tripod would not scratch the paint.

"Shoot him, shoot him," demanded other members of a Moslem gang when one of their number showed up with a Christian prisoner. Obviously nettled, the captor turned to his prisoner. "I'm not going to shoot you," he said angrily. "I want to show these guys that they can't order me around." With that, the Christian was set free.

Discovering an older relative blasting away with a rifle from the roof of their building, a young Beiruti inquired what was going on. "I'm a sniper," the old man said proudly. "They give me $25 for each person I kill. I've already made $100 this morning." "But, uncle," pressed the youth, "how do they know you're telling the truth about the number you've bagged?" The old man bristled: "Am I not a man of integrity?"