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The spreading battle set more and more fires, whose smoke soon covered much of eastern Beirut and hung like a giant cloud over ships in the port. Lebanese firemen, assisted by nine fire engines sent from Damascus, were unable to reach the flames because of the shooting. Reported TIME Beirut Bureau Chief Karsten Prager: "The ferocity of the new fighting deepened the numbness that had been there all along, the recognition by most Lebanese of their total impotence in changing the course of events. The rattle and thump of gunfire kept the city in jitters. Rightists and leftist militiamen blasted away at one another in the old downtown area and in the familiar hot points of Ain Rumanneh, Chiyah, Ashrafiyeh and Furn Chebbak, all along the eastern and southern peripheries of the city.
Roving Gangs. "Almost all of the capital, with the exception of its northwest corner, remained unsafe and paralyzed. A 6 p.m.-to-5 a.m. curfew had little effect on street fighters and roving gangs of plastiqueurs, who blew up a few more shops, adding to the 500 or more already destroyed. The right-wing Christian Phalange claimed that more than 400 mortar shells, a respectable amount in any military engagement, fell on one of its strongholds, the Ashrafiyeh quarter, during a single day."
Premier Karami did not commit the country's 18,000-man armed forces to help stop the fighting, primarily because most of its officers are Christian and therefore, Moslems charge, pro-Phalange. Since the shooting first started in April, ineffectual President Sulieman Franjieh, a mountain man from Zgharta, has done little either to mediate the war or to calm his frightened people. In desperation, Karami drove to Damascus to confer with Syria's Assad and P.L.O. Leader Arafat, as 320,000 Palestinians living in Lebanon are a central point of conflict between Moslems, who support them, and Christians, who resent their presence.
Assad, unwilling to become too involved in the Lebanese imbroglio, demanded that Arafat and Karami press the Moslems into a cease-fire while President Franjieh and Interior Minister Camille Chamoun, a former President and prominent Maronite Christian, simultaneously pressure their side. Arafat agreed to postpone a trip to Saudi Arabia in order to help restore calm, and discussions began at week's end on possible joint Moslem-Christian patrols to enforce a ceasefire. The patrols have been tried previously with little success.
Reign Ended. Other Arab nations were frightened by the continuing violence in what was once considered one of the Arab League's least violent nations. Acting on a proposal by Kuwait, the league called foreign ministers of 20 member nations to a meeting this week in Cairo to discuss possible solutions to the Lebanese crisis.