The army drove Palestinian guerrillas out of two Shiite Muslim villages in southern Lebanon Tuesday, moving to assert government authority in the region for the first time in 16 years of civil war.
Army commandos, advancing behind a fierce barrage from tank cannons, pushed the guerrillas from the hilltop villages of Kfar Hatta and Mjaidel, southeast of the provincial capital of Sidon, in a lightning 90-minute assault.The two villages were used by the Palestine Liberation Organization fighters as a rear-guard base to protect their tiny enclave just over a mile to the west.
Army gunners also pounded guerrilla positions on the fringes of refugee camps east of Sidon and advanced on the PLO enclave.
A police spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said one Lebanese officer was killed and 47 people were wounded in the fighting, which began at dawn.
The wounded included two soldiers, 15 guerrillas and 30 Palestinian civilians, the policeman said. Two deaths and seven injuries had been reported from Monday's fighting.
The thuds of shell explosions shook Sidon, 25 miles south of Beirut, as hundreds of the city's 300,000 residents fled.
The soldiers stormed guerrilla positions in Kfar Hatta, shouting to civilians to stay indoors. The army blasted sandbagged PLO positions in the village with jeep-mounted 106mm cannons and chased guerrillas in narrow alleys.
Kfar Hatta's estimated 1,000 residents, weary of continued violence in their region, emerged cheering from basements to welcome government troops.
Village women served coffee and sweets to the soldiers, as other troops began mopping up in nearby Mjaidel. The army, backed by U.S.-made M-48 and Soviet-designed T-55 tanks, continued north, advancing on the guerrilla stronghold to force the PLO fighters back into their refugee camps.
The PLO's political representative, Zeid Wehbeh, accused the army of a "massacre against the Palestinian people in Sidon" and demanded a cease-fire.
The barrage started at dawn and gained in intensity, with 20 shells per minute fired at times.