The refusal of Israel’s Chief of Staff to disclose details about last night’s raid against the homes and headquarters of Arab terrorists in Lebanon led observers to speculate today that another such raid is likely if Lebanon continued to make available facilities for training terrorists.
Gen. David Elazar declined, at a press conference here today, to provide any information on the raid from the operational point of view. He did say, however; that the raid, in which two Israeli soldiers were killed and two wounded was carried out by paratroopers and a commando unit in a combined operation with the Navy and Air Force.
Gen. Elazar said the raid lasted slightly longer than two and a half hours and that the raiders killed three top terrorist leaders and destroyed the headquarters of the Khuwatmen “Democratic Front” terrorist group. The raiders did not take any prisoners, he said.
NO. 2 FATAH LEADER SLAIN
Gen. Elazar said the loss of the three guerrilla leaders was a severe blow to the Arab terrorist. organizations, particularly since two were leaders of El Fatah. They were identified as Aba Yusuf Najar, described as Fatah’s No. 2 leader; Kamal Nassar, a Fatah leader and spokesman; and Jamal Adwan, believed responsible for planning terrorist activities inside Israel. In response to a question, Gen. Elazar said the three Fatah leaders were involved in the preparation of the massacre last Sept. 5 at Olympiad headquarters in Munich. He said the Israelis had eight targets, seven in Beirut and one in Sidon where Fatah had a garage in which its vehicles were maintained and serviced. Later in the day, Israeli sources estimated casualties in the raid as 50 dead.
Gen. Elazar said specific instructions had been issued to the raiders to avoid, to the maximum degree, any clashes with Lebanese security forces or with civilians. But there was some interference with the raiders and the Lebanese suffered some losses.
PREMIER MEIR PRAISES RAIDS
He stressed Israel’s two-fold policy against terrorist activity–the defensive one, best illustrated in the incident in Nicosia where a security guard on an El Al plane foiled an attempt by three guerrillas to hijack the plane, wounding all of them; and the offensive one, such as the raid into Lebanon last night, which he said was not an act of retaliation but an action to hit the terrorists.
The raids were praised today by Premier Golda Meir in a speech to the Knesset. She said the raiders had attacked terrorists who had killed before and were planning to kill again. “Shining pages” would be written about the raid in the future, she said.
Israeli sources said the raid was ordered after an intensification of terrorist activities in Europe and elsewhere. They cited “at least” nine major incidents which they said had originated in the Beirut terrorist organization. They listed the murder of an American diplomat in Khartoum in the Sudan, the blowing up of a Greek vessel in Beirut prior to its departure for Haifa, the killing of an Israeli merchant in Cyprus and the fact that the merchant’s killers found shelter in Lebanon.
Lt. Avida Shor of Kibbutz Shoval was identified as one of the two soldiers killed in the raid. The name of the other one was withheld though his relatives were informed. The condition of the two wounded soldiers was called satisfactory.
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