'JUST BEFORE 5pm there is a barrage of artillery fierce, so extensive, positively horrifying in its intensity that (we) are stunned into silence. Building building down. Great flashes light up the sky. A crescendo noise like some dreadful thunder rolls across the city'.
Stewart.
What has happened in Beirut has been the most concentrated destruction of a city in warfare, the savage attack population, American bombing of North Vietand before that destruction of the Pyongyang during the war.
The International has claimed that 'at least 80 per of civilians. Other sources put the civilian guerrillas causualty ratio at something like 80 to one.
The extent of the Israeli air, sea and land bombardment of Beirut can be easily seen just from the figures. The death toll in Beirut is 2000. The Sunday reports that over the past nine weeks the Israelis have hit five UN buildings, embassies diplomatic residencies, hospitals or clinics, one mental institute, the Central Bank. hotels, the Red numerable private homes and office blocks.
There is absolutely no doubt make the whole of the population of West Beirut pay for the Palestinian presence, presumably with the aim of driving a wedge between ine muslim Lebanese and the Palestinians.
But if that was the objective, it Tales According to William Stewart: 'Since the attacks began on Sunday there has been a remarkable transformation of opinion in this beleaguered city. desperately wanting the PLO to fire SO so after have been crashing the of fire whole areas, phospherous bombs.
entered the on the just go on burning.
the US volved twin phospherous city of Korean Cross still smouldering. are The plight regularly Israelis.
their Times to relatives homes water, the hundreds tive Cross and incholera. The rat the threatens.
Cross Moves establish leave in order to avoid further bolldshed, Lebanese civilians we talked to all over West Beirut now want to see Israel defeated'.
The butchery and calculated savagery of the Israeli attacks extraordinary. Apart random shelling of the main aeriel weapons of the Israelis have been cluster fragmentation bombs and The ohospherous bombs cause horrendous casualties. Fragments of phospherous cannot be stopped from burning when they have human body. For many victims of phospherous attack nothing can be done - they One widely-reported case inbabies killed in a attack. Because they continued to burn they had to be placed in a bucket of water overnight. The next day they were of the ordinary 1976. civilians has been terrifying. The electricity and water have been disconnected by the Food is in short supply. Manv civilians have suttered the tragedy of having their homes and belongings destroyed.
Some have been forced to move those homes destroyed as well.
Above all this mayhem hangs the threat that the lack of fresh destruction of bodies still in the ruins of the bombed building, will create an epidemic of typhoid or population of West Beirut is multiplying rapidly. A catastrophe even greater than slaughter HOVe Another aspect of the Israeli barbarism has been the treatment of PLO prisoners. A French doctor has reported to the International This eveness count of the summary execution of 20 PLO fighters. There are many other reports of executions and are crimes tribunal to bring the full horror of the Israeli actions to the attention of world public opinion.
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So reports the chief Time cor- respondent in Beirut William