Israeli Bombers Retaliate After PLO Kills 3

At Least 10 Palestinians Killed

By United Press International

Israeli Bombers Retaliate After PLO Kills 3 — Press of Atlantic City, 24 May 1979 — Press of Atlantic City · Atlantic City, New Jersey · 24 May 1979

Transcribed from the clipping

“At Least 10 Palestinians Killed

Israeli Bombers Retaliate After PLO Kills 3 Israeli warplanes screamed into Lebanon and strafed and bombed two Palestinian targets Wednesday in quick and deadly reprisals for a PLO-planted bomb that killed three people outside Tel Aviv, including a mother and her infant daughter.

‘The casualty figure could double,’ said one official at WAFA, the Palestine Liberation Organization news agency. ‘A delayed-action bomb exploded after the raid in Damour and caused nearly as many casualties as the raid itself.’

Beirut PLO spokesman Mahmoud Labadi said the Palestinian-run Gaza Hospital on the southwest outskirts of Beirut was flooded with casualties after the air strikes. Two UPI reporters who visited the scene of the attacks at Damour, reported many ambulances speeding north along the coastal highway taking the air raid victims to hospital.

A communique from Yasser Arafat’s high command in Beirut said 14 Palestinians and Lebanese, including civilians, were killed and 50 wounded in the attacks. Western newsmen reaching one of the stricken villages saw the bodies of three guerrillas who were killed when a bomb dropped on an anti-aircraft position.

The military command announced the attack on ‘terrorist concentrations’ in Lebanon eight hours after Shula Abudran, 33, her 18-month-old daughter Zehavit and Sarah Eichenboim, 51, were fatally wounded. Officials reported 11 others were wounded. They had been waiting for a bus across from a busy department store in suburban Petah Tikva.

Police said a time bomb was placed atop a fiberglass shelter at the bus stop. Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization said it placed the bomb as part of the PLO campaign to ‘wrestle the natural rights of our people that Israel usurped since 1948.’

Since April 22, when Palestinian guerrillas killed four Israelis in an attack on the northern Israeli town of Nahariya, over 60 Palestinians and Lebanese have died in the Jewish state’s land, sea and air strikes on Lebanon. More than 115 others were wounded.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Ken Brown said, ‘We condemn these terrorist acts … (and) those responsible.’ Asked about Israel’s retaliation, he noted ‘the futility of this continuing cycle of violence.’ The PLO said one of its guerrilla squads carried out the morning attack in the Tel Aviv suburb of Petach Tikva.

The explosion of a bomb in a nylon bag hidden on the roof of a bus stop killed a 33-year-old woman waiting for a bus and her 1½-year-old daughter. The third fatality — also a woman — died in a hospital where she was taken with 13 other persons injured in the blast.

Hours later Israel’s jets roared into action, flying bombing runs against Damour, 10 miles south of Beirut, and Aichiyeh, a hill village in south Lebanon, about 25 miles from the Israeli border.

On the diplomatic front, at the Sinai desert town of El Arish, Egypt stuck to the letter of its peace treaty and refused to let Israelis cross the border for eight more months, even though Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin promised the frontier would open Sunday.”

Context added by this archive

The cleanest specimen of the habit this archive counts. At least ten Palestinians killed is the kicker, set small in italic above the fold line. Three Israelis killed is the headline, in the largest type on the page, with the killer named. The three Israeli dead are named in the copy — Shula Abudran, 33, her daughter Zehavit, 18 months, and Sarah Eichenboim, 51.

The ten Palestinians are not, and the figure from the PLO’s own communiqué is 14. Further down, in a sentence with no headline of its own, the running count since 22 April: over 60 Palestinians and Lebanese dead and more than 115 wounded.

Cite this item

"Israeli Bombers Retaliate After PLO Kills 3," Press of Atlantic City, 24 May 1979. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1979-010. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1979-010