12 Palestinians killed; another attack coming?

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.’”

Context added by this archive

The same United Press dispatch as the previous day’s, in another Ohio paper, word for word. The only difference is the headline, which keeps the twelve dead and adds a question about what happens next.

Cite this item

"12 Palestinians killed; another attack coming?," Troy Daily News, 13 November 1977. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1977-014. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1977-014