World Notes LEBANON

General Michel Aoun, the renegade Christian strongman who considers himself Lebanon's rightful leader, was spoiling for a fight. Irritated because his fellow Christians in the Phalangist militia were tacitly supporting a peace agreement giving authority to President Elias Hrawi, Aoun last week ordered his troops to attack Phalangist barracks. When the Phalangists struck back, the result was a civil war within a civil war that turned the Christian enclave of East Beirut into a free-fire zone. By week's end more than 140 civilians were dead.

Aoun, who commands 15,000 troops, apparently underestimated the 10,000- strong Phalangists, who not only held their own but overran a naval base, a landing strip and an army garrison held by Aoun's forces.

Nasrallah Sfeir, the patriarch of Lebanon's Maronites, the country's largest Christian group, pleaded in vain for the factions to stop fighting. "This is suicide," he lamented.