Israel conducted a second air raid on Syrian anti-aircraft missile bases in the Beka Valley of Eastern Lebanon today. A military spokesman said it was necessary to knock out missile batteries that replaced those Israel claimed to have destroyed in a massive air raid yesterday.
Artillery and tank engagements between Israeli and Syrian forces were reported to have taken place in the Beka Valley today.
A military spokesman said Israeli warplanes shot down 20 Syrian MIG fighters in air battles over Lebanon today. According to the spokesman, Syria has lost 56 fighter planes and three combat helicopters since the fighting in Lebanon began, with no losses to Israel.
He said Israeli ground forces were engaged mainly in consolidating positions and mopping up pockets of Palestinian resistance. He said there were tank and artillery duels in Eastern Lebanon.
The spokesman categorically denied Syrian reports that Israeli planes had bombed Damascus. He said no Israeli aircraft have crossed the Syrian frontier. According to the spokesman, an explosion and fires in a Damascus suburb were caused by the crash of a Syrian warplane, not an Israeli air raid as the Syrians claimed.
But military briefings here have been sparse and short on detail. Army policy apparently is to let the fog of battle obscure the situation from the enemy. Israeli media continues to rely for information on Lebanese sources and foreign correspondents in Lebanon. According to those sources fighting is going on in the suburbs of Beirut and near or along the main Beirut-Damascus highway.
40 ISRAELI SOLDIERS KILLED
Israeli casualties are released daily and appear light in view of the scope of the fighting. According to the military spokesman, Israeli losses total 40 killed, 208 wounded, six missing and one pilot taken prisoner from the time Israel invaded Lebanon at noon Sunday up to noon yesterday, the fourth day of fighting. The bodies of five downed helicopter pilots have been identified.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces which captured Damour, a Palestine Liberation Organization strong point on the Lebanese coast six miles south of Beirut yesterday, said they were restoring the town to its original Christian inhabitants. Damour, a Christian village, was taken over by the PLO several years ago.
Israeli forces were reportedly conducting a house-to-house search-and-destroy operation in the captured Lebanese coastal town of Sidon where some 1000 Palestinian terrorists are believed to be hiding in the ruins. In Tyre, the first PLO coastal stronghold overrun by Israeli forces, Israel appointed an army major to serve as mayor of the town while arrangements are made for a return to a normal.
WARNING TO SYRIA
The army said today that the publicity given the call-up of Israeli reserves and the strengthening of positions on the Golan Heights was a deliberate warning to Syria against any attempt to attack Israel from that quarter.
Meanwhile, a situation has cropped up common to all wartime news coverage. Local and foreign correspondents have protested the army’s restriction of their movements in the forward areas. American and European reporters and camera crews flown to the region complained that while Israeli television and radio correspondents could move about at will, they were confined to guided tours of such sites as the Beaufort Castle in southern Lebanon, a PLO stronghold captured by the Israelis early in the campaign and long since out of the fighting.
The army retorted that the Israeli correspondents are in uniform. Some doing their military reserve duty and are providing pool coverage for their non-accredited colleagues.
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