El Fatah raiders struck last night at Kibbutz Hamadiyeh in the Beisa Valley, placing explosive charges under five houses there. A 20-year-old soldier, home on leave, was killed by bursts from assault guns when he left his parents’ house to investigate suspicious noises in the vicinity.
The gunfire aroused the settlement. The men rushed to the armory for weapons and the women shepherded the children to shelters as some gunfire continued. A huge explosion shattered one building The assailants then fled toward the Jordan River, a mile and a half distant, pursued by the men of the kibbutz. At the water’s edge they found tracks showing that the marauders had crossed the river.
Police and security forces took over search of the area. They found and dismantled the four unexploded charges which the terrorists had placed near other buildings in the kibbutz. The young soldier Yoram Peleg, died en route the hospital.
Trackers following the El Fatah band’s trail discovered an anti-vehicle mine planted in the road between the kibbutz and Kibbutz Maoz Chaim, apparently to prevent reinforcements from this kibbutz from reaching the besieged settlement.
An Israeli policeman was injured this morning when Arab terrorists attacked a jeep patrolling near Tubus village, north of Nablus. A curfew was imposed on a number of villages in the area and a house-to-house search turned up a sub-machine-gun and a Russian assault rifle.
Standing restrictions on movements in the old frontier zone–the pre-June 5th Israeli-Jordan de marcation line–will be eliminated as from tomorrow. Some restrictions will remain, however, in the Gaza Strip area and abutting the Sinai Peninsula.
Two Arab saboteurs caught recently at Hebron were sentenced by a military court today to life imprisonment. The men are Mustafa Hamayes, leader of a unit of the Palestine Liberation Front, and Ahmed Ukal, of Damascus, who had been sent to the west bank from Syria to train sabotage gangs.
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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.
