The Israel Air Force today bombed PLO artillery batteries deployed within a Syrian-controlled area east of Beirut The army spokesman said the batteries are located in the Tarshish hilltop-area nearly 20 miles east of Beirut and are the source of intensive shelling on Israeli army positions near the Druze town of Aleh, just south of the Beirut-Damascus highway.
The spokesman said that within west Beirut, fierce artillery and tank fire exchanges had been in progress since dawn, when the terrorists opened fire on Israeli positions near the National Museum. The Israelis returned shell for shell.
Lebanese radio broadcasts asserted that Israeli units pressed forward from the area they hold at the Hippodrome race track, extending their penetration into west Beirut, where they have clamped a steel ring around 6,000 to 8,000 PLO terrorists and Syrian troops.
In the afternoon, Air Force planes shifted their targets to the terrorist-occupied Zabra quarter and to the Bourj-Al-Baraineh refugee camp area, a center of PLO troops and weapons, from which the terrorists had been firing artillery shells, mortar bombs and Katyusha rockets at Israeli troops. The refugee camp was reported to be empty of all of its former civilian users, leaving only the terrorist fighters there.
The Air Force attacks on the west Beirut areas reinforced Israeli ground shelling during the morning made in response to terrorist shelling during the night and this morning.
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