Trackers accompanied by Israel, Lebanese and United Nations officers have established that the Arab raider gang which last Thursday night ambushed a bus in northern Israel; killing three persons and wounding nine others came from across the Lebanese border, an Israel Foreign Ministry spokesman revealed here last night. Earlier, a Lebanese Army spokesman had promised to pursue and punish the terrorists if evidence showed that they came from his country.
The Israel spokesman noted that the tracks of the ambushers led from near Meron, west of Safad, to a point on the Lebanese border seven miles away. The tracks of three of the raiders were identical to those of members of a marauding party which two weeks ago blasted three structures in the Israel settlement of Alma, in Upper Galilee. The tracks led to a Lebanese village called Meiron er Ras.
Among the dead in the bus was Herman Brach, 28, an American rabbinical student who was scheduled to be married this week; among the wounded was Miss Rosika Berkowitz, 26, of Montreal. The bus, on the regular Safad-Haifa run, was ambushed while going uphill. The first burst of fire ripped through the windshield and wounded the driver, who managed to stop the bus before it ran off the road.
United Nations truce chief Maj. Gen, E.L.M. Burns issued a communique in which he deplored the terrorist crime calling it “cowardly and criminal.” His communique continued:” The incident has taken place only a very few days after Israel and Lebanese authorities declared in a meeting of the Israeli-Lebanese Mixed Armistice Commission their intention to continue implementing fully the general armistice agreement and in particular, to search for and liquidate all terrorist organizations within their territories.”
The Foreign Ministry was greatly disturbed by the Burns communique since it felt that he added insult to injury by giving the impression that Israel is also engaged in terrorist activities, also attacking Arab buses. It was even more galling to Jerusalem that UN truce organization, which had never expressed regret when Jews were killed by Arab terrorists, had now in its first statement of that nature, used language that seem to place Israel on the same level with the Arabs in the perpetration of such crimes.
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