Muslim West Beirut

The exodus of Westerners from predominantly Muslim West Beirut continued today after a pro-Libya terror group said it executed British journalist Alec Collett in revenge for the U.S. attack against Libya. Also today, police defused a bomb consisting of 33 pounds of incendiary material and two pounds of TNT outside a British cultural center in West Beirut, authorities said.

Night life is creeping back to once glamorous West Beirut, for years a hotbed of street battles, kidnapings and terror, as war-weary Lebanese look for some fun. "Lebanese are aggressive and unpredictable people. You can't tie them to their TV set. . . . They want to go out and mix. Just give them peace and quiet and they will surprise you," said restaurant owner Chafic Abi Aad.

Lebanese Premier Rashid Karami unveiled a new peace plan for Muslim West Beirut, the latest in a series of Syrian-sponsored formulas to end the violence there. Militiamen are to be pulled off the streets and a 450-man security force from the army and police will begin patrolling early Wednesday, Karami said, without giving details. The new plan is the seventh since Muslim militias took over West Beirut in February, 1984. All so far have proved unworkable.

A previously unknown group claimed today it had abducted a California woman and a Lebanese-born West German father and son "because of their activities in Lebanon." The group, calling itself "The Organization of Just Revenge," made the claim in a brief statement delivered to a Western news agency in Muslim West Beirut. The group did not specify what the three were doing in Lebanon.

The Greek military attache in Lebanon escaped an apparent kidnap attempt Thursday in Muslim West Beirut by speeding away from a pursuing vehicle, embassy officials said. They said two gunmen tried to kidnap Col. Georges Papaioannou shortly after he and his Lebanese driver crossed from Christian East Beirut to the west in a car with Lebanese license plates. "I am blond and look like a foreigner," Papaioannou said later.

Four gunmen kidnaped the Swiss charge d'affaires in Lebanon, dragging him from his car in mainly Muslim West Beirut. In Bern, a Swiss Foreign Ministry spokesman confirmed the seizure of Eric Wehrli, who had been in charge in the absence of Ambassador Paul-Andre Ramseyer, on vacation in Switzerland. Meanwhile, a bomb exploded in an apartment above the offices of the French news agency Agence France-Presse in Beirut. There were no injuries.

The wife of missing Briton Jack Mann, a World War II fighter pilot, said today she had been told he died and that she believed the report to be true. Mann, 75, disappeared May 12 as he drove to a bank in Syrian-policed Muslim West Beirut. None of Lebanon's kidnap groups has specifically identified him as a hostage. But a previously unknown faction, the Cells of Armed Struggle, claimed that it kidnaped an unidentified Briton in Beirut the day Mann disappeared.

A French envoy on a Lebanon peace mission dodged shells when artillery duels erupted in Beirut on Wednesday while he was talking with Muslim leaders. Braving gunfire on his way to Muslim West Beirut, envoy Francois Scheer was later forced to hold the talks in a corridor as shells crashed around the house where he was meeting with a Muslim religious authority.

The Christian commander of Lebanon's army welcomed a U.N. call to halt increasingly fierce fighting in Lebanon, but there was no official word Wednesday from Syrian-backed Muslim forces, who have ringed Christian territory with guns and armor. Fierce shelling erupted Wednesday across the so-called Green Line that divides Beirut, Lebanon's capital, into Muslim and Christian sectors, after a short period of relative calm.

A tanker carrying desperately needed fuel for Lebanon's besieged Christians broke through a Syrian blockade, sparking heavy artillery battles in Beirut. Police reported three people killed and 10 wounded in shelling duels that raged for hours, further undermining cease-fire efforts by Arab League envoys. Police said the tanker docked at the port of Byblos, 19 miles north of Beirut, triggering a fierce Syrian bombardment as it begun unloading its cargo.

Two bombs exploded in the main seaside boulevard of Muslim West Beirut only seconds apart today. Three people were reported killed and four wounded. The blasts shook the Syrian-controlled area in the midmorning as Syrian gunners in the same coastal district opened artillery fire on Christian areas. The attacks have become a daily ritual aimed at preventing Christian units of the Lebanese army from receiving military supplies by sea. No one claimed responsibility for this morning's bomb blasts.

The drum-like thud of some 50,000 Shiite Muslim mourners beating their chests reverberated in Beirut on Monday as they marched in a symbolic funeral for the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. "The glory of Islam has gone. Our back is broken now. . . . Our enemies are rejoicing. We have become orphans," said a sobbing Shiite Muslim cleric in the procession led by white-turbaned clergymen and hundreds of heavily armed gunmen and Iranian Revolutionary Guards. "We cry not with tears but with blood!"