Lebanon Bloody Battle for West Beirut

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During twelve years of civil war, foreign correspondents came to rely on the Commodore Hotel in West Beirut as a respite from the turmoil around them. Feuding militia leaders held press conferences there, and a string of hopeful peace envoys were among its guests. The Commodore's lively bar was renowned throughout the Middle East as a meeting place for those passing through Beirut. It was also the home of a parrot whose uncannily accurate imitation of an incoming artillery shell fooled more than a few newly arrived reporters. While cross fire occasionally damaged the aging seven-story edifice, it managed to remain open for business.

Last week the Commodore's luck ran out. The hotel became a killing ground in the bitter, fierce struggle between two Syrian-backed groups, the Shi'ite Amal militia and a leftist coalition of Druze militiamen and fighters of the pro-Soviet Lebanese Communist Party. At midweek, after an all-night battle, the Druze, lobbing grenades and delivering armor-piercing rockets, stormed the hotel and drove the Shi'ites out. The floors and walls of the lobby were stained with blood, and gaping holes made by rockets scarred its walls. By the time the last guests and employees had fled -- none, miraculously, were hurt -- looters were already at work stripping the building of everything from television sets to vacuum cleaners.

The sudden outbreak of fighting for control of Muslim West Beirut's commercial district was the worst to hit the area in three years. By week's end more than 200 people had been killed and some 400 wounded. Thousands more had been forced to go without food and water for days as gunmen fought pitched battles around them. Hostilities eased briefly late in the week as 4,000 Syrian troops, backed by hundreds of tanks and armored personnel carriers, massed in the nearby Chouf Mountains awaiting the order to move into West Beirut. Their mission: to enforce a cease-fire among Syria's feuding clients, one that might extend south all the way to the port city of Sidon. The sudden mobilization promised to become the largest Syrian presence in Beirut since before the 1982 Israeli invasion.

"Save Beirut from this inferno," pleaded Lebanese Prime Minister Rashid Karami. Tank and artillery fire on downtown streets prevented fire trucks from reaching dozens of burning buildings in the Hamra district, which includes the Commodore and the American University of Beirut. West Beirut's once fashionable main thoroughfare, Rue Hamra, where the city's upper crust could buy anything from French perfume to Cuban cigars, was reduced to a smoke- filled war zone. Declared a retired Lebanese Army colonel: "It is a fight to the finish."

By the end of the week the Druze and the Communists, who had renewed an old alliance just last month, had the upper hand. They had pushed the Amal out of Hamra and the low-income Sunni Muslim district of Zarif and had begun shelling Shi'ite gunmen occupying the state television station in the Tallet Khayyat district, on the southern edge of West Beirut.

As the fighting continued, the big losers were clearly the Syrians. Damascushas 30,000 soldiers in northern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley. Initial pleas by the Damascus government for a cease-fire were ignored. At one point, Amal Leader Nabih Berri ordered his men to "stand fast. Fight until victory or martyrdom."