Palestinian Guerrillas Take Refuge in Camps Near Port : Lebanon: Battles in Sidon with government troops move conflict within deadly range of civilians.

BEIRUT —  Palestinian guerrillas fought desperate battles against Lebanese army troops Wednesday after fleeing hilltop positions to the confines of two refugee camps in Sidon.

The battles around the camps at Ein el Hilwa and Miye ou Miye moved the conflict to within deadly range of both Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. Hospital sources said at least 18 people, many of them civilians, were killed and 35 were wounded in Wednesday’s battles.

However, few families appeared ready to flee to safer areas. “We’ve lived through everything else; we aren’t going to abandon our home now,” said the father of two small children, whom he pushed back into their house as shells exploded near the camps.

The army drive is part of the Beirut government’s moves to restore its control in militia-held regions for the first time since the outbreak of civil war 16 years ago. The army took control of Sidon, Lebanon’s main southern port, from Muslim militiamen Monday, then moved on to the Palestinian camps, which are bases for about 5,000 guerrillas of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Twelve hours of battles on Tuesday drove the Palestinian fighters from their strategic ridge-top strongholds, forcing them down into the camps, home to 65,000 Palestinians.

While Palestinian firepower is no match for the Lebanese army’s heavy artillery, the mobility of the guerrillas’ multiple rocket launchers and mortars allows them to fire and reposition before the army can return the fire.

The Palestinians also have anti-aircraft guns, which they use against Israeli warplanes that raid Palestinian and Lebanese guerrilla bases in southern Lebanon. Israel has carried out 12 attacks on these positions this year, killing 23 and wounding 96.

Entrances to the two camps have been blocked with barbed-wire barricades. The army is much more concerned about who tries to enter than about those who leave. Many Palestinian fighters remain hidden in the ravines and olive groves near the positions they fled Tuesday, but as their supplies and ammunition run out, they will be forced to regroup inside the camps.

Young Palestinian men living outside the camps are being picked up and questioned by Lebanese army intelligence.

The army has reinforced its total of troops deployed in the Sidon area from 6,000 to more than 10,000. Many of the troops deployed here served under Gen. Michel Aoun, the former army commander. They are U.S.-trained and considered the best in the army.

Aoun was fired in late 1989 but held out until October, 1990, when Syrian firepower defeated his loyalists and forced his downfall.

BACKGROUND

The Palestinians are the first significant armed force to resist the efforts of President Elias Hrawi’s government to restore control over all of Lebanon under a 1989 peace accord between Muslims and Christians. The army previously disarmed the various militias in and around Beirut. If the Palestinian guerrillas can be kept penned up and disarmed, it will be another humiliation for the PLO. The organization, spurned by most of the Arab world for its support for Iraq in the Gulf War, was forced to retreat from Beirut and southern Lebanon after Israel’s 1982 invasion. PLO fighters were driven from their northern Lebanon bases a year later by Syria and Palestinian dissidents.