Israel Air Force jets attacked Egyptian positions in the central section of the Suez Canal zone for an hour today and returned safely to their bases. A military spokesman said the targets were army outposts, artillery and anti-aircraft gun batteries. Israel’s big potash and chemical plant at Sdom on the southern shores of the Dead Sea came under heavy attack by Soviet-made Katyusha rockets just after midnight today. There were no casualties but some damage was sustained and electric power lines were put out of commission for several hours.
The attack was the longest and heaviest yet carried out against the potash works. Israeli authorities believe that Arab guerrillas based in Jordan staged it at the request of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, of Egypt, in retaliation for Israeli commando attacks on military targets inside Egypt. The plant, located near the site of the Biblical city of Sdom at the lowest point on the earth’s surface, has a daily output of 2500 tons of potash and 40 tons of bromine. It employs 820 workers. Israeli gunners returned Syrian artillery fire in the southern Golan Heights yesterday. The Syrian shelling began at 7:30 p.m. local time and lasted an hour. There were no casualties or damage on the Israeli side.
EXPLOSION DAMAGES JEWISH SCHOOL IN BEIRUT
(Beirut radio reported that a dynamite explosion severely damaged a Jewish school in the Lebanese capital and shattered hundreds of windows and injured patients in a nearby Arab hospital early today. The blast went off on a window ledge of the Khaddouri Louis Zilka Charity Foundation School which has been under special police guard since the June, 1967 Arab-Israeli war. A Lebanese security official said the explosion was the work of “criminal elements” trying to defame Lebanon.)
(The New York Times published an eye-witness account of Sunday’s Israeli air raid close to Cairo’s Almaza Airport. The dispatch was filed by Henry Kamm from Bombay, India. He said a single Israeli fighter bomber managed to penetrate the heavy Egyptian anti-aircraft defenses to bomb the Huckstep Army camp about a mile east of the airport, setting fires that burned for nearly two hours. He said passengers in the crowded airport terminal were thrown into confusion after the attack, Indicating that no prescribed routine was set for airport employes and passengers in case of air raid.)
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