An Israeli soldier was killed and three others were wounded to day when their patrol car was ambushed near the Beirut city limits. A military spokesman said their car was hit by two rocket-propelled grenades. Soldiers in a second patrol car returned Fire, but the attackers fled to west Beirut.
The army identified the dead soldier as David Barda. He was to have returned home today to attend the funeral of his grandfather who died yesterday. Barda’s father suffered a heart attack when he was in formed of his son’s death. The father was rushed to the hospital.
The ambush occurred in the vicinity of the Galerie Semaan, near the abandoned railroad line which separates the area patrolled by Israeli forces from the zone patrolled by U.S. marines and by the Lebanese army further west. The incident was the 30th attack by Palestine Liberation Organization units on Israeli troops since the beginning of the year and the first inside the Beirut city limits.
The proliferation of these incidents which have caused Israeli casualties in recent weeks has led to reported confrontations between the Israeli army and the marines. The latter have barred Israeli troops from entering their zone in pursuit of PLO assailants.
Israeli officers have complained that the marines, part of the 4,000-man U.S.-French-Italian multinational force in Beirut, have been lax in allowing PLO terrorists to infiltrate their zone and escape after attacking Israeli vehicles on a highway east of the railroad tracks. The U.S. has vehemently denied those allegations.
MEASURES TO AVOID MORE CONFRONTATIONS
Maj. Gen. Amir Drori, commander of the northern region met last Friday with U.S. special envoy Morris Draper and the marine commanding officer to reaffirm the railroad line as the boundary between the Israelis and the marines and to take measures to avoid future confrontations. The Israeli and American officers agreed to set up telephone and radio connections between their forward posts for that purpose.
It was also agreed that the Americans would continue to man a past in an abandoned building on the Beirut University campus at Reihan which is in the area patrolled by Israeli troops.
FIGHTING IN WEST BEIRUT
Meanwhile, the Christian quarters in east Beirut reportedly came under rocket and artillery attack from Moslem-occupied west Beirut today raising fears of a new escalation of violence in Lebanon.
The attack was apparently in retaliation for the car bomb explosion last Friday which destroyed a building in Syrian-occupied east Lebanon that served as region al headquarters for the PLO, the Syrians and Lebanese leftist militias. Reports reaching here today put the death fall at 45, with many others wounded.
The blast occurred in Shtourah village on the Beirut Damascus highway where it passes through the Syrian controlled Bekka valley.
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