12 Palestinians killed in bombing

United Press International

Transcribed from the clipping

“BEIRUT, Lebanon (UPI) — Lebanese newspapers today said a dozen Palestinians were killed in the second Israeli bombing attack on southern Lebanon in three days and some warned of a major attack by Israel within 48 hours.

Earlier Palestine Liberation Organization reports minimized the casualty count in Friday’s bombing and indicated the Israeli jets were driven off by ground fire before they could inflict serious damage. Political sources said U.S.

Ambassador Richard Parker told President Elias Sarkis in a one-hour meeting Friday the United States could not prevent Israel from ‘exercising its right of reprisal or even its right of pursuit.’ But the sources said the United States apparently was not prepared to allow Israeli occupation of south Lebanon.

They said Parker was understood to have advised Sarkis that if rocket attacks on Israeli settlements continued, ‘a military escalation could follow in which the Lebanese population of the south may suffer heavily.’ The independent daily An Nahar and several other newspapers today listed 12 persons killed in the strikes Friday.

The PLO said the strike was aimed at the Palestinian refugee camp at Rashidiyeh just north of the Israeli-Lebanese border. An Nahar said the 12 killed were Palestinian guerrillas and initial hospital reports said at least 14 persons were injured.

The right-wing daily Al Ahrar, in a front-page story, said Israel has warned Lebanon through the American ambassador that unless the Palestinians withdraw completely from south Lebanon, Israeli forces would launch a large-scale attack against the south within 48 hours.

Another rightist daily, Al Bayraq, also said Parker expected potentially serious developments in south Lebanon over the weekend. In the first Israeli bombing in and around the biblical port of Tyre Wednesday, nearly 100 persons — most of them Lebanese civilians — died. The Israelis said the strikes were targeted only at guerrilla military positions.

‘After that, you can bet we were ready,’ said a PLO spokesman. He said anti-aircraft fire and SAM-7 ground-to-air missiles kept the planes away Friday and forced them to return to Israel. PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat presided Friday night over an emergency meeting of the guerrilla group’s leadership.

The PLO later issued a statement saying the guerrillas were ‘fully committed’ to observing the Cairo and Shtaura accords regulating their presence in the south.

Al Bayraq reported that Arafat told the PLO Executive Committee that Syria’s President Hafez Assad told him: ‘I shall be very frank with you; either the Shtaura Accord or Israel in south Lebanon. So go back and carry it (the accord) out.’

PLO officials said the success of the guerrillas in driving off the attack on Rashidiyeh, south of Tyre, was due to a full military alert put into effect after the Israeli raid Wednesday. Israeli planes Friday also tried to attack Nabatiyeh in the southeast, but the PLO said they were turned back before bombs could be dropped.

Friday’s bombing attack came after Israel announced that rockets had been fired on the north Israeli settlement of Kibbutz Yiron, about a mile from the Lebanese border. Israeli officials said the planes bombed missile sites after the jets were fired on.

But a Lebanese reporter in the area said the attacking planes at Rashidyeh dropped many of their bombs harmlessly into nearby orange and banana groves and into the sea to the west. One Palestinian group, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, quoted witnesses as saying an Israeli plane had been shot down, but there was no confirmation of the report.

Israeli gunners pounded several southwest areas in retaliation for the Yiron rocket attack, which caused no injuries.”

Context added by this archive

Four Lebanese papers are named as sources in one news agency dispatch — An Nahar, Al Ahrar, Al Bayraq — and set against the PLO’s account and Israel’s. The figure from the previous raid is in the copy and not in the headline: nearly 100 persons — most of them Lebanese civilians — died at Tyre on the Wednesday.

Directly beneath this story on the page, in type of the same size, a Rotary speaker says education adds opportunities to life.

Cite this item

"12 Palestinians killed in bombing," Bryan Times, 12 November 1977. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1977-013. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1977-013