BEIRUT -- Nobel Peace Prize winner Mother Teresa Saturday led 37 crippled and retarded children out of war-torn west Beirut through watchful Palestinian and Israeli lines.
'It was done with the permission of the Palestinians and everyone - the world,' a source close to the 1979 Nobel laureate said of the morning crossing of the Green Line dividing east and west Beirut.
The children, many of whom could not walk, were plucked from filth and excrement in the Islamic Home for the Aged, which despite its name is a mental hospital. The hospital was hit by Israeli bombs.
The hospital is near the refugee camp of Sabra, a repeated Israeli target.
The 71-year-old missionary led a convoy of four red-and-white International Red Cross vehicles into east Beirut, past the Israeli-controlled port and then dashed to a convent run by her Missionaries of Charity order in Mar Takla.
'They are being washed and cleaned now. Many cannot walk,' said a member of the Oeuvres Hospitaliers Francaise of the order of Malta, a French-affiliated Red Cross organization that has worked closely with Mother Teresa.
Nuns at the convent tended the children.
The convent mission where the children were being treated is not far from Israel's military headquarters at Baabda.
'She was up early and by 10 a.m. the children were here,' said the source closed to the Albanian-born nun. The Red Cross confirmed 37 children were taken out of west Beirut.
Mother Teresa, who has worked for 52 years among the lame and poor of Calcutta, was advised against going into west Beirut by Catholic prelates.
But, taking advantage of the bombing lull now in its second day because of a cease-fire, she crossed over.
On Friday she also ducked into PLO-held west Beirut, apparently to discuss getting the children out.
At a news conference Saturday, Mother Teresa refused to discuss the politics of the Lebanese crisis saying only:'The children are with us. They are being treated.'
The renowned missionary quoted a line from the Prayer of St. Francis and likened herself to an instrument of peace.
Mother Teresa arived Wednesday as the peronsal envoy of Pope John Paul II, saying she would go wherever she was needed to help.
