The State Journal-Register · 15 August 1976
CP-1976-038
Mass executions reported in Palestinian refugee camp
Transcribed from the clipping
BEIRUT, Lebanon (UPI) — Witnesses Saturday reported mass executions and other atrocities in the fall of the Tal Zaatar Palestinian refugee camp to Christian soldiers. Heavy fighting erupted at dusk in what Lebanese predicted would be new Christian onslaughts.
Artillery duels broke out across battlelines in Beirut and heavy fighting was also reported in the countryside, the mountains east of Beirut and in northern Lebanon.
The fighting came at the end of a day of quiet on most fronts but Lebanese predicted the Christians would follow their capture of Tal Zaatar with new attacks to capture more territory from the Palestinian and Moslem forces.
International Red Cross mission chief Jean Hoefliger, whose team has been searching the ruins of the Tal Zaatar camp for wounded victims, refused to confirm any specific massacre reports, saying “the page has been turned on Tal Zaatar.” But he spoke bitterly of “regrettable incidents.”
Western witnesses reported they had seen “dozens” of Palestinian men taken prisoner by Christian militiamen being lined up and machine-gunned to death at Dikwaneh, a suburb near the camp. Some of the refugees who made it safely to Moslem-held west Beirut described mass executions of whole families and other atrocities.
Their reports could not be confirmed by other sources. Hoefliger said the Red Cross knew nothing of the fate of more than 100 men taken by the Christians at the end of the 56-day siege of Tal Zaatar.
Cite this clipping
"Mass executions reported in Palestinian refugee camp," The State Journal-Register, 15 August 1976. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1976-038. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1976-038
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The same copy, in 1 other paper
Their text and this one are nearly identical. 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-1976-038.
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