Syrian gun posts opened fire against Israelis again last night, culminating a weekend of border violence along the borders of all four hostile Arab areas — Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Gaza. (See page 2 for Jordan’s complaint to U.N.)
In last night’s action, the Syrians opened machinegun fire in the north, near their border, and Israeli units returned the fire. The Syrians switched to mortars, and the exchange lasted a half hour before United Nations military observers succeeded in effecting a cease-fire. The fighting took place in the same area, north of the Israeli town of Ashmora, where four Israeli irrigation workers were wounded by Syrian gunfire last Friday night.
(In Washington, official sources revealed today that, the American Ambassadors in Israel and Jordan have urged restraint on the two governments in the wake of recent border friction. The United States was depicted as carefully observing developments with a view to possible escalation. However, the Syrian-Israel frontier was seen in Washington as potentially more dangerous than the Jordan-Israel border because of the extremist tendencies of the Damascus authorities.)
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