4 Bus Hijackers Killed In Israel

By DAVID NORDELL / Associated Press Writer

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EDITOR'S NOTE: The following story was submitted to the Israeli military censor who ordered deletion of some material. DIR AL BALAH, Occupied Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli troops today stormed a hijacked bus, freed about two dozen passengers and killed the four Arab terrorists who had threatened them with a bomb during a 10-hour ordeal.

A woman passenger also was killed in a fierce pre-dawn assault on the bus that lasted only seconds, the military said. It identified her as an Israeli soldier who had been traveling on the bus. Seven other passengers were wounded, military officials said. The military today confirmed reports by army radio and Israel radio that all four hijackers were killed.

Earlier in the day, a military communique said two hijackers were killed and two were captured. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization, issued a statement in Damascus, Syria, claiming responsibility for the attack.

“The forthcoming days will see a number of spectacular operations in the occupied territories,” it added. The red-and-white bus, carrying 35 passengers, was hijacked near the Mediterranean coast city of Ashod by the four men who got on as paying passengers and then pulled their weapons and ordered the driver to head toward the Egyptian border.

The bus was disabled 10 miles north of the border by army sharpshooters who shot the tires out, and about nine passengers escaped, the military said.

From there, authorities negotiated for hours with the terrorists, who demanded the release of 500 guerrillas held in Israeli jails and safe passage to Egypt for themselves, said Defense Minister Moshe Arens, who watched the rescue mission from the scene.

“They had a bomb they threatened to explode, but we managed to take control before they had a chance to detonate it,” Arens told Israel radio. The hijackers also were armed with bottles of acid, knives and a grenade, officials said. Passenger Esther Ziv said one threatened repeatedly to kill everyone aboard. “We will kill all of you on the bus. We are starting to fight today.

Everyone on the bus will die,” Ms. Ziv quoted the hijacker as saying. “One of the terrorists took an attache case, opened it ... and said, ‘Don't anybody move or I'll blow up the bus,’” said passenger Yosef Stivi, who escaped from the bus before the final assault.

He said two of the hijackers were “very young, about 17 or 18,” another was a little older and the one carrying the attache case appeared about 26. “He was the most dangerous one. He was a real fanatic,” Stivl said. “He gave instructions to hit anyone who moved ... Most of the passengers simply sat there in shock.” The troops stormed aboard the bus just before dawn.

“I heard a tremendous burst of gunfire. I said to myself ‘This is it,’” an unidentified passenger told Israeli radio. “I immediately lay on the floor. Someone fell on top of me,” he said. Soldiers told the passengers to stay on the floor “until they know what's going on around us.”

“There were shots, lots of them, for about 15 seconds and then it was all over,” said Associated Press photographer Max Nash, who was 250 yards from the bus when it was stormed. The hijackers seized the bus Thursday evening after it left Ashdod on its run from Tel Aviv to the port of Ashkelon.

The bus broke through two roadblocks before sharpshooters stopped it near the Palestinian refugee camp of Dir el Balah, about 50 miles south of Tel Aviv in the territory captured from Egypt in the 1967 Middle East war. A pregnant woman who became hysterical was released from the bus south of Ashdod, and about nine passengers escaped when the bus stopped, the military said.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir announced on Israeli radio that the rescue operation had ended successfully with the release of all passengers, and said it proved terrorists had no chance of “imposing their will on us and escaping unpunished.”

“Apparently they are making a desperate effort, after their terrorist front in Lebanon was destroyed” by Israel's 1982 invasion, Shamir said. “We will prevent them. We will strike them before they reach us.” The Israeli military censor initially blacked out all coverage of the hijacking for several hours, but rumors of it spread nonetheless.

The bus hijacking was the first incident of hostages being taken in Israel since March 12, 1978, when a dozen Palestinian guerrillas landed in northern Israel in rubber dinghies. They seized two buses filled with Israeli sightseers near Kibbutz Maagan Michael, 37 miles north of Tel Aviv.

The guerrillas forced the occupants into a single bus and drove down the coast toward Tel Aviv. A shootout with Israeli forces at a highway junction just north of the city left 35 Israelis and nine guerrillas dead.

How this transcription was made

Single scan, four columns. The lower half of the scan carries a separate, unrelated AP story (“British Limit Chemical Export”) which is not transcribed. Transcribed from 9x crops of each column. — No masthead, no date line, no folio. Internal evidence: “The hijackers seized the bus Thursday evening” and the storming was “today” before dawn, so a Friday paper. April 13, 1984 was a Friday, and the Bus 300 hijacking took place on the evening of April 12, 1984. Consistent with Maria's label; the date is not printed on the scan, and the paper is taken on her label alone. LABEL ORDER: Maria's slide note reads “Hickory Daily Record April 13 1984 / Kingsport Times News May 10 2002”, but in the image files this 1984 story is s087_2 and the 2002 story is s087_1 — the file order is the reverse of the label order. Judged from the pages, not the filenames. Worth a check if she has the slide to hand. — Two, both verified at 9x and kept as set: “the Mediterranean coast city of Ashod” (for Ashdod — the same paper spells it “Ashdod” correctly twice later in the story), and “Stivl said” (for Stivi, whose name is set correctly at first mention).

Cite this clipping

"4 Bus Hijackers Killed In Israel," Hickory Daily Record, 13 April 1984. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1984-053. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1984-053