`Black Road' claims lives of four Irish soldiers

They call it Lebanon's Black Road. Since the new coastal highway was opened two years ago, scarcely a day has passed without a fatal road accident. Yesterday four Irish peacekeepers joined the toll, the greatest loss of Irish lives in a single incident since the Irish Battalion of UNIFIL was created in 1978.

The four were: Ptes Declan Fitzpatrick (19), from Portlaoise.

A few hours after the crash, the white Toyota Land Cruiser still stood where it had come to rest, at right angles to the Sidon-Beirut highway, facing the sea.

The metal frame used to hold the cover on the back was bent and twisted where the vehicle had rolled over, and the torn canvas flowed like a curtain on to the tarmac. A few handfuls of broken glass were scattered across the small pool of blood next to the open cab door.

The stony, red hills of the Chouf Mountains spill down to the Mediterranean here, between the power station at Jiyeh and the Beirut dormitory town of Damour, 13 miles south of the capital.

As I hurried across the highway to the site of the accident, the earth trembled beneath me. Israeli aircraft were firing air-to-ground missiles at Hizbullah guerrilla targets in the Iqlim al-Toffah, less than 10 miles away. It is a sound that every soldier in the Irish battalion knows well.

About 15 Lebanese army soldiers, paramilitary gendarmes and plainclothes army intelligence men swarmed over the site of the accident, while a mammoth Lebanese army tow-truck waited behind it.

"Don't take notes," a tall Lebanese sergeant with a bushy black moustache shouted at me. "Don't take pictures. You must leave. I will take your camera." The fate of the Land Cruiser appears to have been negotiated between the Lebanese and UNIFIL, for when I returned a couple of hours later at sunset, it had been hauled on to a UN - not a Lebanese army - tow truck.

Lebanon's coastal highway is littered with wrecked cars and twisted metal railings. I counted at least a dozen accident sites in as many miles before reaching the place where the Irish soldiers were killed. Most of the accidents are caused by high speed, but one survivor said the six-vehicle Irish convoy was travelling at around 50 k.p.h.

A leaky old Lebanese fuel truck, the kind you see everywhere here, deposited some of its cargo on the road, causing Pte John Keohane (20) to lose control at the wheel. No other vehicles were involved in the accident.

Apart from Pte Keohane, the other injured soldier in hospital in Sidon was Sgt Celsus Whyte. The third injured soldier, Pte Andrew O'Neill, was taken to a hospital in Beirut. Two other soldiers who were discharged from hospital in Sidon were Cpl Andrew O'Connor and Gunner Aidan Doyle.

At the Hammoud Hospital in Sidon, where most of the Irish dead and wounded were taken, Dr Ghassan Hammoud said he sees victims of at least one coastal highway crash every day, more on weekends. "They drive like madmen here," he added sadly.

Just before Christmas the daughter of a high-ranking Lebanese army officer and several of her friends were killed on the same stretch of the Black Road. As casualty figures have mounted, the Beirut Daily Star has launched a campaign for better security on the highway. The tragic loss of four Irish lives can only worsen its reputation for danger.