Defense Minister Moshe Dayan told the Knesset (Parliament) yesterday that evidence has been uncovered that Communist China is giving weapons and training to Palestinian Arab guerrillas. He said, in a reply to questions, that Red China was the only non-Arab country where Palestinian terrorists got training. He disclosed that Chinese-made equipment had been found during a recent round-up of terrorist suspects. He said Egyptian intelligence units were sending terrorists into the Sinai peninsula. (The Foreign Ministry was looking into a report last week that the Cuban military was training Arab guerrillas in Cuba.)
Meanwhile, Jordanian and Israeli forces exchanged mortar and machinegun fire across the Jordan River for 15 minutes today in the northern Jordan Valley. A gang of Arab El Fatah saboteurs, using a woman with two babies as a shield, ambushed and killed three veteran Israeli paratroopers yesterday in a cave southeast of the West Bank town of Nablus. Israeli forces later killed all seven saboteurs without harming the woman and children.
Police said today that the commander of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in East Jerusalem had been captured along with a large arms cache including scores of hand grenades and many pounds of high explosives. They refused to identify him but said that he was not a professional or a prominent citizen. The Popular Front is the terrorist organization which has claimed credit for the supermarket bombing in Jerusalem last month and last week’s bombing of the Hebrew University cafeteria. Alleged terrorists arrested in recent days have included a prominent lawyer and an Anglican minister from Ramallah and two physicians. A suspected terrorist arrested yesterday was identified as Subhi Gusha, one of several Arab doctors who staged a sit-in to protest the integration of Arab hospitals with Israeli hospitals.
Police said that a 14-year-old mentally retarded Arab boy was being held in connection with a bomb explosion at the Ramallah branch of the Bank Leumi last week in which a West Bank Arab was injured. They were looking for the man who gave him the explosives. The boy was incapable of providing any information, police said.
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