The United Nations Security Council was informed here today in a report from Lt. Gen. Odd Bull that foot-tracks had been found leading from the Israeli side to both Syria and Jordan after on-the-spot investigations by U.N. military observers of two terrorist attacks which had occurred inside Israel on October 7 and October 8. Gen. Bull is chief-of-staff of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization, with headquarters in Jerusalem’s No-Man’s Land.
Both incidents — the latter costing four Israeli lives and the wounding of two other Israelis, while the first resulted in three Israeli casualties — are the subject here now of the latest Israeli complaint against Syria. Israel charges the Damascus Government with responsibility for both attacks, which it has told the Council were carried out by members of El Fatah, the Arab terrorist-sabotage organization under “incitement” and “encouragement” of the Syrian Government. The Council last night adjourned its debate on the Israel complaint, pending receipt of the UNITSO report, and has not yet set a date for resuming its consideration of the Israeli complaint.
In his report, Gen. Bull informed the Council that Israel had complained against both incidents to the two United Nations Mixed Armistice Commissions, one for Israeli-Jordanian affairs, the other for Syria and Israel. Both of the commissions, he stated, are scheduled to meet tomorrow — at two separate sites — to consider Israel’s separate complaints.
U.N. MILITARY OBSERVERS SHOWN TRACKS LEADING TO SYRIA, JORDAN
Reporting on the U.N. military observers’ probe of the grievance against Syria, Gen. Bull stated that, between the scene of the fatal incident, near the Israeli village of Shaar Hagolan, just south of the demarcation line between Syria and Israel, and a hard-surfaced road 215 yards away, “a trail of footprints was found.” He said these footprints “were alleged by an Israeli tracker to have been made by a party of three persons” and that other prints nearby “were well-defined.” The U.N. observers at this site, he said, had interviewed five Israeli witnesses.
The earlier incident referred to in the Bull report had occurred in the Romema district of Jerusalem, where three explosive charges went off under two apartment houses, wounding three persons, while a fourth explosive had been found and defused by Israeli patrols.
In this case, Gen. Bull said, the site was near the Jordanian border. Here, he stated, United Nations military observers, aided by Israelis, investigated the blasts and later continued the probe on the Jordanian side of the frontier. A tracking dog, he said, traced footprints from the site of the explosions to the Jordanian border. On the Jordanian side, he reported, a “Jordan tracker dog completed a short track.”
Syria’s Ambassador George J. Tomeh, who had been defending his Government against the Israeli charges in the Security Council, delivered a sharp diatribe against Israel at a plenary session of the General Assembly today. Israel’s Ambassador Michael S. Comay addressed the Assembly later, replying hot only to Mr. Tomeh’s attack but also to the similar, anti-Israeli statements made during the current Assembly session by all the other Arab delegates representing their countries in the Assembly.
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