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October 13 Massacre





BACKGROUND


After months of skirmishes, the Syrian Army and Lebanese militias then aligned with Damascus (such as the Amal Movement and Hizbullah ) stormed the holdout of the military government of East Beirut, led by Gen. Michel Aoun , who had declared a "War of Liberation" against Syria earlier during the year. Aoun's forces were headquartered around the Presidential Palace in Ba'bda, Beirut . The Aounist areas were quickly overrun.

While the main confrontation was clearly a military one, the attackers afterwards in many instances turned to plundering, and tens of Aounist army soldiers and civilians were summarily executed by Syrian forces or the militias, as they cemented their hold on the capital.

The attack on the Aoun government marks the end of the Lebanese Civil War. Syria would Dominate the political life of the country for the following 15 years, under the auspices of the Taif Agreement .


DEATH COUNT

  • Lebanese Civil war October 13, 1990 at 7:00 a.m The Syrian Forces invaded the Eastern areas which support the Lebanese Army. An estimated 700 people were killed by the Syrian invaders that day and 2000 had been injured. Estimates of the Lebanese Army losses during the battle, who where executed by the Syrians and who where captured then sent to the Syrian prisons and never came back to Lebanon ranges between 400 to 500 soldiers. It was also reported that at least 200 supporters of General Aoun, most of them military personnel, were arrested by the Syrian forces in east Beirut and its suburbs, these men simply disappeared.


Harris states that one hospital "received 73 bodies of Lebanese army soldiers, each executed at close range with a bullet in the lower right side of the skull" and that "15 civilians" were murdered "by the Syrians in the Bsus". He also connects the killing of National Liberal Party (NLP) leader Danny Chamoun to Syria. (p. 277)


LITERATURE

  • William Harris, ''Faces of Lebanon. Sects, Wars, and Global Extensions'' (Markus Wiener Publishers, Princeton, USA 1996)