The Libyan commercial airliner shot down by Israeli jets over Sinai on Feb. 21, 1973, was believed at the time to have been a spy plane conducting reconnaissance over the top secret advance warning post at Umm Hashiba, just north of the Gidi Pass, the army weekly Bamachaneh reported. Seventy persons aboard the jet were killed and 13 survived. Israel expressed “deepest regret” at the time over the error but blamed the pilot of the airliner for ignoring signals to land and maneuvering in a suspicious manner.
According to Bamachaneh the Israeli high command ordered Air Force jets to intercept the unidentified plane which had entered Israeli air space from the direction of Egypt and, since Egyptian anti-aircraft batteries failed to open fire, the supposition was that the Egyptians were aware of its mission.
In addition, the fact that the plane was ordered to land at the Israeli air base at Refidim in northern Sinai but that the pilot turned westward on a course directly over the secret installations at Umm Hashiba convinced the Israeli pilots it was on a spy mission. It turned out later that the Libyan aircraft lost direction in a sandstorm after taking off from Cairo and inadvertently strayed over Sinai.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
