BEIRUT, Lebanon -- The Lebanese army discovered an elaborate network of tunnels built by Palestinian guerrillas for shelter from Israeli attack and for hiding huge quantities of military supplies.
'We just do not know how many miles of these tunnels there are,' said a Lebanese officer Wednesday. 'Some are new, some are old. We have no maps. They may be booby-trapped. Who knows?'
The concrete-lined tunnels, one of which ran for 2 miles from west Beirut toward the south, linked the Palestinian strongholds in the city with the three refugee camps south of Beirut -- Sabra, Chatila and Bourj Barajneh.
Reporters, taken on a tour of the tunnels Wednesday, saw huge bunkers packed to the ceiling with modern explosives ranging from Russian GRAD missiles to American mortar and howitzer shells.
'We can only guess what is down there,' the officer said. 'The army has been here to take away some of these munitions but they have only taken a small amount.
Some of the passageways were a mere 3 feet high while others were big enough to conceal up to eight small trucks.
At the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps, where Christian militiamen killed hundreds of Palestinians Sept. 16-18, eight entrances to the tunnels were found.
Two of the camp entrances led to bunkers filled with more than 500 cases of North Korean-made cannon shells and American mortar rounds.
It was not known if Palestinian civilians in the refugee camps were aware of the maze, or how many sought shelter there to escape marauding Christian militiamen.
On the northern perimeter of Chatila, close to the city sports stadium, steel doors led down a sandy grade into a 10-foot high tunnel big enough to park seven or eight small trucks.
At the bottom of the bullet-strewn grade, where a massacre survivor said in an interview last weekend she hid during the killing, the tunnel narrowed and turned into an 8-foot-wide bunker, floored with a wooden, slat walkway.
A dozen Soviet GRAD missiles were stacked against the wall in wooden cases. At least 50 mixed green and brown boxes of smoke bombs, artillery shells of varying calibers and mortar bombs were piled high - many still packed in paper and plastic wrappings.
