BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) _ The family of Gen. Michel Aoun drove to Beirut’s airport today to board a flight for Paris, but France and Lebanon remained locked in a dispute over the fate of the defeated rebel commander.

Witnesses said a convoy of six French Embassy cars accompanied by four Lebanese military police jeeps left the embassy compound in the eastern suburb of Hazmiyeh and drove to the airport in Syrian-controlled south Beirut.

Two Air France executive jets had flown in earlier to evacuate Aoun’s wife, Nadia, and their three daughters - Mireille, 22, Claudine, 19, and Chantal, 17 -and transport them to France, where they will live in exile.

ADVERTISEMENT

Aoun remained in the French Embassy, where he has been granted asylum.

The Lebanese government has refused to allow Aoun to leave the country, insisting that he face trial for a variety of crimes and the alleged theft of at least $75 million from the ailing state treasury.

Earlier today, President Elias Hrawi accused Aoun - who took refuge in the French Embassy with his family on Saturday - of ordering his troops to continue fighting even after he broadcast his message of surrender.

″I’m in the French Embassy. The outcome (of the battle) will be favorable to us. Go on. Go on fighting,″ Hrawi quoted Aoun as telling his forces last week in a radio message.

″These were the orders Aoun radioed to his forces, even after his message of surrender was broadcast,″ Hrawi said in remarks released by his office.

Hrawi’s government also denied press reports that scores of Aoun’s defeated soldiers were massacred after surrendering to the Lebanese and Syrian forces who ended Aoun’s 11-month mutiny on Saturday.

Prime Minister Salim Hoss said France’s call for a United Nations investigation of reports of such killings was based on ″biased rumors.″

The Defense Ministry said in a communique that reports that Aoun’s troops were massacred after surrendering were ″absolutely baseless.″ The communique said Aoun’s troops who died ″fell in the military operation.″

The eight-hour, air-and-ground assault killed 350 people and wounded 1,200 by police count. Police said the fatalities included at least 100 Syrian soldiers. But The New York Times, citing doctors at East Beirut hospitals and Syrian officers, said in today’s editions that the death toll was at least 750.

ADVERTISEMENT

Military sources speaking on condition of anonymity described ″ferocious hand-to-hand fighting″ between the advancing Syrian troops and Aoun’s forces on the eastern edge of his 80-square-mile enclave in the Christian heartland.

One source said that after Aoun’s address was broadcast, one of his officers told the Syrians he was surrendering, but then opened fire when the Syrians came forward. The Syrians responsed by pounding the Aoun forces’ position with rocket launchers and tank cannons, then stormed it with tank-led forces, according to the source.

The Defense Ministry’s communique came a few hours after France urged U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar to investigate reports of summary executions of Aoun’s vanquished troops in the enclave northeast of Beirut.

French and British press reports said about 100 of Aoun’s 15,000 troops were killed after surrendering. The French Foreign Ministry said France was trying to obtain information about the reports but also wanted a U.N. probe.

French opposition leaders today demanded tougher French action in response to the allegations. One of them - Alain Juppe, secretary-general of the conservative Rally for the Republic party - said the government should demand an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council in order to force the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon.

A police spokesman in Lebanon said on Thursday that by the time police examined the bodies of the slain troops they found ″no solid evidence that the soldiers were liquidated.″

″None of the corpses we examined had hands tied behind the back and very few of the dead soldiers were hit in the skulls with bullets,″ said the spokesman, who could be named in line with regulations.

Associated Press photographer Ahmed Azakir, who visited the government hospital in suburuban Baabda on Tuesday, reported seeing more than 50 bodies of Aoun’s troops in the morgue. He said none had their hands tied.

Most of Aoun’s troops declared allegiance to Hrawi’s army under Gen. Emile Lahoud, a Maronite Catholic like both the president and the defeated general.

The leftist newspaper As-Safir - in a front-page, eight-column headline - said the call for a U.N. investigation was part of a French effort to ″distort the operation of unifying Beirut.″