Israel has demanded a meeting of the Israel-Lebanese Mixed Armistice Commission to consider a raid inside Israel last Friday night by four saboteurs who blasted an empty kindergarten in the Shomets, border settlement. The infiltrators were believed to have come from Syria through Lebanon whose relaxed border watch made easier the penetration of Israeli territory.
Israel will ask Lebanon to cooperate by tightening border controls once again and the help make it more difficult for Syrians to cross into Israel. The Israel-Lebanese MAC does not adopt resolutions as a form of procedure, but comes to mutual agreements on future actions for pacifying the border.
The rubber-booted saboteurs demolished the kindergarten, cut telephone communications and damaged a water pipe leading to the settlement but injured no one before fleeing back across two borders. A subsequent investigation uncovered unexploded demolition charges under several other buildings. This is the first incident along the Lebanese border in many months.
Radio Beirut announced tonight the arrest of 15 Syrian agents in Lebanon, including the head of an organization ostensibly aimed at returning the Palestine Arab refugees to Israel, on suspicion of having planned and carried out the attack on the Israel settlement of Shomera. Ten other members of the group were rounded up by Lebanese authorities last week in connection with several acts of sabotage in Lebanon.
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