BEIRUT, Lebanon -- The 15th anniversary of bloody civil war in Lebanon passed Friday with no end in sight to sometimes savage fighting between -- and even among -- rival Christian and Moslem forces.
The combatants change, alliances shift, but the fighting rages on and most Lebanese can do nothing other than numb themselves to the carnage around them.
'After 15 years of bloodshed, I cannot see anything any more,' said Sonia Haddad, 35, a resident of the Christian enclave in east Beirut. 'I cannot understand what's going on around me, and I don't know what will happen next. I'm sure many people have lost vision.'
The Lebanese civil war broke out as scattered violence between Christian gunmen and Palestinian guerrillas on April 13, 1975.
Since then, local forces backed by regional powers have put the Mediterranean nation through a series of wars, street battles, and kidnapping sagas.
'April 13 marks the (anniversary of the) beginning of unabated barbaric violence wrecking the country and my future,' said Nouhad Sakkaya, an east Beirut resident who has recently fled inter-Christian violence to Moslem-dominated west Beirut.
'If you look around carefully, you'll realize that we are living at a period of time reminiscent to the Middle Ages,' Sakkaya said.
The United States placed a peace-keeping force in Beirut in the early 1980s, and 264 U.S. troops were killed and 134 were wounded in action before President Reagan pulled them out in 1984. An Oct. 23, 1983, attack on the headquarters of the U.S. Marine peace-keepers killed 241 American servicemen.
A French peace-keeping contingent lost 86 men. Most were killed by a suicide truck bomb attack on their headquarters also on Oct. 23, 1983.
Officials have estimated the overall 15-year death toll at 143,000. In recent inter-Christian fighting, some 920 have died. Another 1,000 people have been killed since April 1988 in a non-stop bloody warfare between pro-Syrian Shiite Amal militiamen and Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants.
The latest warfare has pitted troops of Christian Gen. Michel Aoun against militiamen commanded by rival Christian Samir Geagea.
In house-to-house and street battles that started Jan. 31, the two forces have used tanks, multi-barreled rocket launchers and heavy cannons to turn hundreds of multi-story apartment houses and other buildings into rubble.
The inter-Christian violence has made life extraordinarily difficult for more than 2 million people residing in the capital and surrounding areas.
Artillery shells destroyed the country's main electric power plant and wrecked the water distribution network, forcing Beirutis to go to extreme lengths to secure these essentials.
Drinking water is scarce. Air pollution grows worse as thousands switch on roaring electric generators to light their homes, to operate businesses or to pump water from wells.
About 400,000 Lebanese have emigrated since the beginning of the war, officials estimate. Another 400,000 of the estimated 3 million in the nation are believed to want to leave the country.
Pope John Paul II, in an Easter message to the Christian Maronite patriarch, Nasrallah Sfair, said he still hopes for peace and a 'prompt resurrection of the country.'
'The drama in Lebanon must cease,' the pope said. 'My thoughts turn spontaneously toward the population of Lebanon, toward its different communities, all sorely tired for 15 years by the enormous suffering caused by the war,' the pope's letter said.
