Israel Air Force jets bombed terrorist targets in south Lebanon again Friday following a Katyusha rocket attack on Kibbutz Yar in Upper Galilee which caused no casualties or damage. A military spokesman said that two Israeli planes on patrol duty over Lebanon attacked a source of anti-aircraft missile fire in a grove south of Tyre. The spokesman said the scene of the attack was not near a populated area and the planes returned safely to their base.
(Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Chaim Herzog, explained to Secretary General Kurt Waldheim in a letter Friday that the “considerable damage” and apparently heavy loss of life caused by Israel’s air raids on terrorist targets in southwest Lebanon last Wednesday was the fault of “PLO terrorist groups, which as a matter of policy locate their military installations in or near civilian centers in the hope of inhibiting action against them.” According to Herzog, the casualties in Lebanon resulted from a direct hit on a munitions dump which set off a chain of explosions.
(Herzog noted that Wednesday’s raids were in retaliation for Katyusha rocket attacks on Nahariya last Sunday in which three Israelis were killed and five injured. He said Israeli intelligence indicated “that the number of such attacks on Israeli civilian targets was to increase in scope and intensity” and therefore the Israeli government “was left with no alternative but to strike at the sources of fire.”)
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