Surgeons at Hadassah Hospital have saved the leg of 16-year-old Dejean Replogle, the American girl injured yesterday in a terrorist grenade attack on a tourist bus on the outskirts of Jerusalem. The operation to remove shrapnel reportedly lasted 11 hours and was completed only early this morning. Doctors said Miss Replogle’s condition was “satisfactory” but that she would have to remain in the hospital for some time to complete her recovery.
(In Washington, the State Department today condemned the terrorist grenade attack “We condemn this latest act of terror in which an American citizen was injured,” a statement released by the Department said. “This senseless violence not only hurts innocent lives but also works against the atmosphere needed for a just and peaceful settlement of the Middle East conflict.”
(The statement, given to newsmen by State Department spokesman Robert Anderson, noted that the U.S. Consul General in Jerusalem talked to the leader of the tour group, offering assistance to Miss Replogle’s parents and other members of the tour. But so far, they have required none.”)
Police are holding eight suspects out of more than 40 detained for questioning yesterday after the bus carrying 17 American Baptist tourists from Jacksonville, Fla. was attacked in Azariyeh village, four miles east of Jerusalem. Security forces have taken preventive measures in Jerusalem and Bethlehem against possible terrorist attacks on foreign tourists and pilgrims attending Christmas festivities tomorrow night.
There are an estimated 15,000 tourists in Jerusalem at present, many of them Christians. The Palestine Liberation Organization, which claimed responsibility for the grenade attack at Azariyeh, warned Christmas visitors “not to go to occupied Palestine.” The warning was contained in “Wafa, the PLO organ published in Beirut.
X-MAS TRUCE MINIMIZED
Meanwhile, reports that Israeli and Lebanese authorities had agreed to a Christmas truce on the northern frontier were minimized by Israeli army sources today. The sources denied that Israel had agreed to suspend its preventive shelling of terrorist strongholds in southern Lebanon during the holiday season in return for a Lebanese undertaking to restrain terrorist incursions against Israel.
The sources said the army promised only to try to avoid hitting olive groves on which Lebanese farmers depend for much of their income. But they said they could not guarantee that the groves would be unharmed. Israeli farmers in Upper Galilee were reportedly angered at reports of the Christmas truce which they said would allow Lebanese farmers to tend their crops unscathed while Israeli farmers had to remain on guard against terrorist attacks.
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