BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Hundreds of Palestinian civilians were massacred in two refugee camps on the outskirts of Beirut, apparently by Lebanese Christian militiamen given control of the camps by Israeli occupation forces, reporters at the scene said Saturday.
Three United Press International reporters saw bullet-torn bodies piled in groups of 10 or more scattered through the ruins of the Sabra and Chatila camps.
It was impossible to get an accurate estimate of the total number of Palestinians shot to death at the camps because the bodies were strewn across several acres. It appeared the final toll would be well over 1,000.
The rampage apparently began Friday. Reporters who tried to get into the camps early that day discovered the Israelis had turned them over to the militia of the Phalangists, the Israeli-allied Lebanese Christian group that has repeatedly threatened the Palestinians.
While Israeli soldiers manned positions on a hill less than a quarter mile away from the Chatila camp, the Phalangists apparently rounded up and killed everyone they could find.
At the United Nations, Palestine Liberation Organization representative Zehdi Labib Terzi claimed that as many as 1,500 civilians had been killed. He was still attending a U.N. session late Saturday and unavailable for further comment.
In Jerusalem, a senior Israeli official said the Lebanese army has agreed to move into the Chatila, Sabra and Fakahani Palestinian refugee camps on the outskirts of west Beirut at 10 a.m. Sunday morning. (2 a.m. EDT).
The official said the Israelis had turned back west Beirut's main financial street Saturday to the Lebanese but stressed this did not signal the start of an Israeli withdrawal as demanded by President Reagan and the United Nations.
The U.N. Security Council, after two hours of private consultations, convened an urgent meeting Saturday night to consider sending troops back into west Beirut to prevent further bloodshed.
Arab nations planned to ask that 5,000 U.N. troops in south Lebanon, members of the earlier peacekeeping force, be sent in to protect civilians and that the Council's five permanent members then send additional forces, according to Jordan's ambassador, Hazem Nuseibeh.
Earlier, U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar agreed with an urgent appeal from the United States, France and Italy to send additional U.N. observers to west Beirut.
The Italian government asked that the French, Italian and U.S. peacekeeping force be reinstated, but the State Department said there was no contemplation 'at this time' of sending U.S. forces back to Lebanon.
Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat, in an interview from Damascus, said intelligence reports showed Israelis -- not militiamen -- massacred the civilians.
'They (the Israelis) sent special commandos with guides only from (Lebanese army Maj.) Saad Haddad,' he said.
Israeli officials expressed shock at the deaths but said they had prevented an even greater massacre. One senior Israeli official said, 'The moment we heard what was going on, we moved to stop it,' but he admitted he didn't know what time that was.
In Washington, Reagan expressed 'outrage and revulsion' at the slaughter and said Israel had failed to carry out its promise to prevent such incidents.
At the Chatila camp Saturday, there were no guards or gunmen anywhere in the camp and no one left alive to tell what happened.
A spokesman for the Phalangist Lebanese Front, who asked not to be identified, said, 'The Lebanese Front were never in the camps.' Western reporters, however, saw Phalangists in the camps Friday.
The camps had been under the control of the regular Lebanese army until the Israeli advance on west Beirut three days ago in the aftermath of the assassination of Lebanese President-elect Beshir Gemayel, leader of the Phalangists.
Israeli military sources said the Israeli army moved forcefully to prevent violence and did not hesitate to open fire 'even on extremist Phalangists.'
The Phalangist forces broke into the southern edge of the Chatila refugee camp 'and while coming out they reported to the IDF (Israeli army) that they were involved in heavy fighting with casualties to both sides,' one Israeli source said.
The Israeli officials said an investigation of the massacre will be made.
Leftist members of the Israeli Parliament immediately called for the resignation of Prime Minister Menachem Begin and other top officials.
The Lebanese government radio blamed Christian militias Haddad, who controls a strip of territory on the Lebanese-Israeli border in the south and whose troops had been reported seen in the camp Friday along with the Phalangists.
The Phalangist troops blocked off the main entrance to the camps Friday and barred all reporters. People in the area reported afterward they heard shots being fired.
Many Israeli soldiers refused to talk about what they heard or saw but one Israeli soldier said 'there was lots' of shooting in the camp Friday.
Lebanese army sources reported Israeli troops fired flares into the sky from their positions next to Chatila Friday night at a time when several people in the area reported hearing shooting inside the camps.
Under the U.S.-sponsored agreement to evacuate Palestinian guerrillas from Beirut, guarantees were provided for the security of the refugee camps, which also had served as bases for the PLO.
