Los Angeles Herald Examiner · 13 August 1976
CP-1976-031
Palestinians Vow Fight Will Go On
Shown from the top. The whole column — 3.3 times taller than it is wide — is in the enlargement.
Transcribed from the clipping
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — The Palestinians and their leftist Moslems Lebanese allies threatened today to avenge the fall of the Tal Zaatar Palestinian camp and vowed that Lebanon’s civil war would continue. Palestinian leader Farouk Kaddoumi said his men would “avenge Tal Zaatar elsewhere in Lebanon.”
Leftist papers said the Moslems might “escalate fighting in Christian-held mountain areas,” through which Moslem villages are still scattered. “Lebanese will have to brace for a protracted war,” said Kamal Jumblatt, the Moslem leader of the Lebanese leftists. “We must brace ourselves for more shocks, similar to that of Tal Zaatar.
“Our prime duty now is to set up a strong popular army to resist the Syrian invasion and to liberate captured areas. We will have to resist partition, because a Christian state in our region.”
The flight of emaciated, weeping civilians from Tal Zaatar was arranged by the International Red Cross and Palestinian civilian leaders from within the camp, who negotiated directly with Christian militia officers leading the siege.
The radio station of Pierre Gemayel’s right-wing Christian Phalange party claimed the evacuation also was secretly agreed to by Palestinian security chief Abu Hassan in a Wednesday night meeting with Gemayel’s nephew Alexandre.
The residents of Tal Zaatar began fleeing when it became apparent the victorious Christian forces were holding their fire in an undeclared truce. Kholi said in a news conference 8,000 persons were taken out of the camp by trucks from the Red Cross, the Arab peacekeeping force and even the Christian Phalange militia. He said another 4,000 simply fled.
The fall of Tal Zaatar Thursday removed the last Moslem stronghold from Christian East Beirut and consolidated the area with the Christian hinterland north of the capital. Christian militiamen fought mopup actions today against isolated pockets of defenders in the 74-acre camp.
Palestinian sources said scattered hand-to-hand fighting continued but admitted that the camp had been conquered. Hours after Tal Zaatar fell, Moslem gunmen of the Ambushers militia laid siege to the Assyrian quarter in the heart of Moslem West Beirut.
The Ambushers accused the quarter’s 3,000 Christians of supporting “Christian atrocities” against refugees from Tal Zaatar. Street fighting escalated during the night along the dividing line in Beirut and nearby mountain towns. An incomplete count of casualties by security officers and hospitals showed at least 186 persons killed and 215 wounded.
The war has taken more than 34,000 lives since it erupted in April 1975. Leftist gunners fired artillery and mortar barrages into the Christian suburb of Ashrafiyeh, and Christians returned the fire, officials said.
Cite this clipping
"Palestinians Vow Fight Will Go On," Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 13 August 1976. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1976-031. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1976-031
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The same copy, in 1 other paper
Most of the shorter text appears in the longer one. Found by comparing transcriptions, not by reading them side by side, so this establishes that the text overlaps and not that these papers ran the same dispatch. How this was done.
Last updated 2 November 2026
This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1724 to 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.
The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the news agency that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. A city here is where the newspaper was published, not where the story came from, and on most records it was taken from the masthead.
Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-1976-031.
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