De Clerck and Malsagne put more than 10,000 Christian refugees in Deir el-Qamar during its 102-day siege. Hunger killed 12 people in fragile health, and some diabetics died for want of insulin.

At 6.20 am a truck bomb destroyed the Marine battalion headquarters near the airport; 20 seconds later a second blew up the Drakkar, the nine-storey base of the French paratroopers. Fisk and de Clerck and Malsagne give 241 American and 58 French dead; Picard has 239 and 56. Fisk notes these were France's first combat deaths since the Algerian war. De Clerck and Malsagne name Imad Mughniyeh as prime suspect; Fisk writes that the two drivers were never identified.

De Clerck and Malsagne note that no French president had visited Lebanon since independence before Mitterrand's trip.

The conference sat from 31 October to 4 November (Picard has 1 to 8 November), with Syria's foreign minister Khaddam present and Prime Minister Wazzan kept out by a Syrian veto. Amine Gemayel chaired; Camille Chamoun and Pierre Gemayel spoke for the Lebanese Front, Frangieh, Jumblatt and Karami for the opposition, Saeb Salam for the Sunnis, Adel Osseiran for the Shi'is.

US aircraft struck Syrian positions on 4 December. Fisk counts one plane brought down, with the pilot dead and the co-pilot taken prisoner (Jesse Jackson obtained his release in January 1984); Hanf counts two planes lost. Hanf also places, without a date, the deaths of eight Marines from Syrian artillery fire in the same episode.

The New Jersey fired shells, not bombs: one-ton 16-inch rounds, according to Fisk. De Clerck and Malsagne say its rounds often missed, by up to 9,000 metres, and killed civilians; Christians called it 'New Jersa', a new shame.

On 15 December, after 102 days, the siege of Deir el-Qamar ended. Israel brokered the departure of Samir Geagea's Lebanese Forces and most refugees for East Beirut; the town was left mainly to its elderly.

Escorted by five French warships, Greek ships including the Odysseus carried Arafat and some 4,000 men from Tripoli to Tunis, the PLO's second evacuation from Lebanon after Beirut in 1982.