Beirut Lebanon

Militiamen began pulling out of Beirut on Saturday on the first day of a phased plan to extend the government's authority over the Lebanese capital after 15 years of civil war. Witnesses said scores of Shiite Muslim Amal gunmen were seen leaving for southern Lebanon with artillery, mortars and heavy machine guns. "We will complete our withdrawal from all of Beirut today (Saturday).. . . Not a single bullet will remain in the city.

With the sound of helicopters hovering overhead, Samir hunched behind a pile of sandbags and sank his teeth into a hamburger. The thirtysomething Beirut resident was not a warrior taking a moment of respite on the battlefield. He was a regular customer dining with his black-veiled wife and little son at Buns and Guns, a new, war-themed restaurant where every detail, from the menu and decor to the names of sandwiches, is inspired by the military world.

Druze militiamen drove Shia Muslim fighters from the Hamra commercial district Thursday and controlled three-fourths of Muslim West Beirut after five days of house-to-house fighting that cost at least 100 lives, police reported. A Shia religious leader called the battle for supremacy "collective suicide." Police said 375 people were wounded in the fighting between the Shia Amal militia and a leftist alliance the Druze formed with Lebanese Communist Party gunmen.

In one swoop, the Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah took over a large section of Lebanon's capital Friday, altering the country's political balance and demonstrating a level of military discipline and efficiency that left the pro-Western government struggling to exert its authority. Within 12 hours, the Iranian-backed group dispatched hundreds of heavily armed Shiite fighters into the western half of Beirut, routing Sunni Muslim militiamen, destroying opponents' political offices and shutting down media outlets loyal to the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and to Sunni leader Saad Hariri's Future movement.

With the sound of helicopters hovering overhead, Samir hunched behind a pile of sandbags and sank his teeth into a hamburger. The thirtysomething Beirut resident was not a warrior taking a moment of respite on the battlefield. He was a regular customer dining with his black-veiled wife and little son at Buns and Guns, a new, war-themed restaurant where every detail, from the menu and decor to the names of sandwiches, is inspired by the military world.

U.S. Army helicopters evacuated about a dozen of the 37 Americans at the U.S. Embassy in East Beirut on Friday during a lull in three days of heavy fighting for control of the area near the embassy. As the Americans were flown to Cyprus, the Lebanese army and Christian militiamen fought scattered battles, but a fragile cease-fire appeared to hold in most of East Beirut, where the fighting has killed 60 people.

Israeli warplanes dropped 23 tons of bombs on a bunker allegedly sheltering top Hezbollah leaders and hammered Lebanon's countryside Wednesday in the single deadliest day for Lebanese civilians in a week of fighting. Thunderous blasts echoed over Beirut before 9 p.m. as dozens of aircraft dropped their loads of explosives on the impoverished, Hezbollah-run neighborhoods south of the capital.

A powerful bomb exploded in a Christian neighborhood of East Beirut late Friday, killing at least one person and wounding 23, officials said. The bomb, detonated just before midnight, heavily damaged the balconies and facades of several buildings and destroyed at least two cars. Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi, commander of the Internal Security Forces, said the bomb had been placed in a bag hidden between two cars. The blast occurred several days before a U.N.

Their bodies and psyches still etched with the wounds of Lebanon's civil war, the people of Beirut shepherded their former prime minister's body through the capital's bullet-scarred streets Wednesday in a funeral march that turned into a protest against Syria. The day began with somber prayers over the body of Rafik Hariri but gave way to a jostling outpouring of religious fervor and nationalistic rage as at least 150,000 mourners crammed the streets.

Former Lebanese prime minister and billionaire construction magnate Rafik Hariri was killed by a massive car bomb Monday afternoon as his motorcade wended through a posh seaside Beirut neighborhood he had helped erect over the ruins of civil war. The blast shook the ground for miles, chewed a crater 3 yards deep in the street and swathed luxury hotels and restaurants in thick black smoke. At least nine people died along with Hariri, and more than 135 were wounded.

Armed clashes Wednesday in the Lebanese capital between supporters of the Western-backed government and the Hezbollah-led opposition threatened this divided country's fragile calm. The fighting began with opponents of the government setting tires ablaze to block the city's main roads, notably those leading to the international airport, where flights were suspended.

Family, friends and party loyalists gathered Thursday to bury Walid Eido, a 65-year-old anti-Syrian lawmaker assassinated with his son and eight other people in a bombing on Beirut's waterfront the day before. Flanked by slick secret service agents speaking into their sleeves, the funeral procession passed billboards with images of the Lebanese politician and his son, and the words: "The men of justice, the martyrs of justice."

MONDAY night, 9 p.m. The darkened streets were eerily empty. At Bread, there were five people at a window table and a couple at the bar. "It looks promising," said Nemr Abboud, co-owner of the restaurant. "Yesterday, we had zero. Today for lunch, zero." Half an hour later, Kamal Mouzawak, a leading proponent of organic farming in Lebanon, and three Italian companions sat down at another window table. "This is resistance," Mouzawak said. "Resistance is trying to have a regular life."

Mohammed Haidar watches yellow machines chew smashed kitchen appliances like hungry beasts, crumpling the stoves and refrigerators, compressing them into tight-packed wads. Neighbors in the bomb-wrecked streets are glad to scavenge the mangled guts of domesticity; they buy the balls of metal cheap. "It's deformed and weak. People take it and remold it," Haidar says. He snorts, the smoke of his Marlboro hanging like vapor in his mouth. "They should recycle the whole city."

The massive sit-in staged by Hezbollah supporters so far has done little to dislodge the U.S.-backed government, but it has managed to turn the Lebanese capital inside out -- literally. Some of the poorest and most marginalized people in the country, Shiite Muslims, have abandoned their homes in suburban slums to camp out on the nation's priciest bit of real estate.

Hundreds of thousands of supporters gathered in Beirut's southern suburbs Friday to celebrate what Hezbollah's leader called his group's victory over Israel in fighting this summer. Sheik Hassan Nasrallah's speech in south Beirut, an area badly damaged by Israeli airstrikes during the fighting, was his first public appearance since the war broke out July 12.

Family, friends and party loyalists gathered Thursday to bury Walid Eido, a 65-year-old anti-Syrian lawmaker assassinated with his son and eight other people in a bombing on Beirut's waterfront the day before. Flanked by slick secret service agents speaking into their sleeves, the funeral procession passed billboards with images of the Lebanese politician and his son, and the words: "The men of justice, the martyrs of justice."

Lebanon announced a timetable for uniting divided Beirut and ending militia rule after 15 years of civil war. The reunion is to start Saturday and is to be completed by midnight Nov. 19, the government of Syrian-backed President Elias Hrawi said in a statement. Rival militias will pull out and allow Lebanese troops and police to take control of Christian East and Muslim West Beirut.

I walked down the steps to the seaside restaurant looking for my old friend Issam. I didn't know what to expect. He'd been my driver, comrade and general dispenser of wisdom when I lived here as a foreign correspondent covering an earlier war. But I hadn't seen him in more than 20 years. Now I was back for the first time, chronicling Lebanon's latest trauma -- and looking around for snippets of my past.

In this mountain village, once a stronghold for Christian militiamen who fought in Lebanon's bitter civil war, the woman strolling past fruit stands and cafes Saturday looked jarringly out of place. She was a Shiite Muslim, wearing a light-blue head scarf. In years gone by, she would not have dared to enter Bikfayya, where the afternoon air is cool as Beirut swelters about 10 miles below. But the Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon have made for a new order, at least for now.