An American missionary accused of being an Israeli agent was shot to death by masked gunmen at a children’s center in the southern Lebanon security zone Tuesday night.
Troops of the Israel Defense Force and its allied South Lebanon Army were reported to have surrounded Rashaya Fukkar village on the eastern slopes of Mount Hermon, where the killing occurred.
But Israeli authorities denied any connection with the victim, William Robinson, 56, described as an evangelical Christian who worked with retarded children.
Rashaya Fukkar, a village of about 5,000 mostly Sunni Moslems, has been the center of a media campaign that accused Robinson of trying to buy land to establish a settlement in Lebanon for Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union.
The persistent charges led the Lebanese government in Beirut to order an investigation of Robinson’s activities.
Timor Goksel, spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon, said Wednesday he knew of no Israeli settlement activity in Lebanon.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said that “we deplore this act of terrorism against an American citizen.”
She said that Robinson was operating in Lebanon “apparently independent of any organization,” although he had received some support from the Pentecostal Holiness Church in Oklahoma City.
Tutwiler added that U.S. officials had several times warned Robinson that he should leave Lebanon. Requests by Robinson to have his U.S. passport “revalidated” had been denied twice, she said.
Robinson was alleged to be variously an agent of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, of the CIA and of the KGB.
Bill Wofford, administrator of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, said Robinson was shot by masked intruders armed with Kalachnikov assault rifles.
According to Wofford, Robinson was engaged in prayers at the time with his wife Barbara, their four sons and about 20 handicapped children for whom they provided shelter.
Wofford described Robinson as not being particularly pro-Israel. He said he was trying to buy a plot of land to build a children’s rehabilitation center.
The pro-Syrian Lebanese National Front claimed credit for the slaying.
(JTA correspondent David Friedman in Washington contributed to this report.)
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